Eighteen: Everything Is Grace

I turned eighteen on Sunday.

Eighteen years, full of brightness and color, hurt and sadness, joy and discovery, betrayal and letting go, dancing and laughter...eighteen years full of grace.

Recently, I heard someone express pity for non-Christians, as the pain of their memories is truly all that there is for them, it's all that they see. But, as Christians, we are graced with the ability to see God at work, even in our toughest moments.

So I have taken to thanking God for the painful moments in my life. Not just the kind of painful, hard moments...but the kick-in-the-stomach memories, the ones the knock the wind out of you and bring tears to your eyes even after all of these years because the things that happened were genuinely wrong. The hurt that you felt was real and you weren't just overreacting or overly emotional...those times when you were shaken to the core and wondered what the point of anything was.

I have a tendency to just shove those memories away under the guise of "here God, take my life!", when in reality, I'm just holding on even more tightly, because what is He going to do with them? Do I just have to forget? I want to forget...but I don't want to let the person go unpunished. I want to keep being angry and bitter and hurt, because that's how that person deserves me to be.

Especially when the pain isn't acknowledged, when it's side stepped with a "get over it" or a "you just need to forgive and focus on your own faults"...especially when no one is there, when no on stands up for you...so you feel like you have to battle on your own. I have felt like it's just me against the world, and God is there to be the cheerleader. It's up to me to fight and get all bloodied up.

When in reality...it's me fighting against myself. My actions aren't affecting the people who have hurt me...I'm the one who is dealing with them on a daily basis. They are just causing more and more hurt.

So, within the last month, I have intentionally been going back to those moments when I've felt my weakest. And I have been asking Jesus to just flood those moments with His grace...for in my weakness, His power is strong.

Through His grace, I have been surrendering more and more each day. There is something so validating about our pain. We cling to it and nurse it, but don't do anything to eradicate it. In a sense, we want it to define us. We like to feel bad for ourselves and to be justified in feeling badly about others who cause hurt.

Friends, we are children of God. We were not created to suffer. God allows it because He gives us a free will and there are merits and graces that come from suffering, but this kind of suffering is ridiculous and self-centered. Jesus Christ was BRUTALLY MURDERED so that we could be free of our identity of hurt...and come to cling to our true identity as His bride (the Church!), as God's children.

We don't need to hold on to our pain. We can surrender it to a God who is in control. He knows our pain, He sees it...and He feels it, right along with us. He cries with us. He doesn't tell us that our hurts don't matter...He tells us that He's sorry. He tells us that He loves us. His promise of "it's going to be okay", isn't empty because He literally died so that it would be even more than okay...that it would be true, good, and right.

So, let's let go. We don't have to battle. He fights for us...and He has already won.

1 Peter 5:7 tells us to "Cast your cares on Him, for He cares for you." What a beautiful truth.

Every moment of my life, every pain, every joy...it's grace. It's through the grace of God that I'm here right now, that I was created, that I'm surviving. Every single moment of my life has been flooded with His grace, whether or not I've seen it. Moments of pain are made beautiful in the light of unending, explainable grace.

God's grace is alive and well...God is on the move and He has been working in my life since day one. Because of grace, I can call pain and suffering "beautiful" because I know that my Daddy has a plan. More than that, I know that He cares for me. He loves me.

This moment, right now, this is grace. These words...they are grace.

Eighteen years of grace. That is the story of my life, ultimately. I am the beloved of the Son and the daughter of the Father and my life is grace.

So is yours.

I'm praying for you.

Alone

So excited to be doing the A to Z Challenge for the second year in a row! I will be posting each day (besides Sunday) this month. I'll be posting things I've learned throughout high school.

I have always thought of "alone" as negative, bringing on other words such as "rejection" and "abandoned". It summons memories of sobbing by myself in my room or walking through a crowded hallway, unseen.

Alone. I have experienced loneliness. 

Freshman year, I felt so alone. I remember thinking that high school was a great, big magical place, and I was so ready to kill everyone with kindness. I remembered this one girl in my second grade class who always smiled at everyone and was so, so sweet. Everyone loved her. I wanted to be like that-- liked by everyone, friends with everyone.

But then...the people I smiled at didn't all smile back. Most looked away or didn't even meet my eyes to begin with. I tried to be friends with everyone, but there must have been something wrong with my methods, because it didn't really work. 

So, I shut down. I stopped trying...and bitterness grew inside of me.

In the three years after ninth grade, so much happened. I continued to experience various forms of loneliness, but was mostly able to stifle it with "friends" (loose definition of the term at times). Until the start of this school year.

Senior year. It's a crazy thing. And the thing about the crazy thing is that it brings about a lot of change. For one reason or another, I found myself alone. The majority of my friends living out of town and having lost touch with the rest, I didn't really have anyone to just hang out with or grab coffee with or other typical friend stuff.

Loneliness. It can be crushing.

Earlier this year, I was venting on the phone to my cousin about how alone I felt. She had the most Holy Spirit-filled response: "What is God using this time to teach you? Maybe He just wants some Annie time."

That was such a huge slap in the face-- in a good way. 

Maybe He just wants some Annie time.

We're so quick to be negative about when we're alone. But maybe our loneliness is a reminder of something more...that we weren't created for this world. We weren't created to be satisfied by these people that surround us. Loneliness is a scream from our hearts for God.

Because without Him, even what we see as the "best" of relationships is absolutely pointless.

I have come to believe that Jesus has allowed me to go through times of loneliness to get rid of the temptation to fill myself with other people. In times of loneliness, Jesus has showed me that He alone can fill me and that He alone will remain faithful.

I ask God "why" all the time, especially when I've gone through alone time. A verse that really answers that question is Sirach 39:21:

"No cause then to say, 'what is the purpose of this?' For everything is chosen to satisfy a need."

So what is my need? My ultimate need? To be filled by God, to let Him completely take over in every part of my life. Perhaps God chooses loneliness to satisfy that longing in our hearts for Him, by removing the distractions of other people.

Let's allow our loneliness to point us to a God whose arms are continually open and beckoning, despite wherever we've been. St. Paul tells us to rejoice in all things, so let us rejoice in the times when we feel alone!

And here's the best part: God will fill our hearts. It's not something we have to convince Him to do; He already longs to. Just think: when we're feeling alone or rejected, we feel but a shadow of His heart. Think of all of the people living without God, continually rejecting Him...and we've been a part of that very boat.

Jesus Christ alone can fill us. He alone can heal our lonely hearts. So let's surrender anew each day to His awesome, powerful love.