Patty Wysong has created a fun meme where once a week
bloggers posted on the letter of the week. Check out the details here. It is called A2Z: Take 2. A2Z as she challenges bloggers to
write a post each week going through the alphabet. Take 2 since this is the second time she has used this meme.
Anyone can join in and you don’t have to always participate.
This week’s letter is
G and there is no better word than I can imagine starting with G than:
G = God
I am so excited to
welcome Jen Ferguson here today with a guest (another good G word) post about
her faith and God. This lady loves the Lord! Jen writes a wonderful blog,
Finding Heaven, and makes all who visit there welcomed. What a loved community
she has created and gathered.
Please visit her
blog. You may also be interested in also checking out her Soli Deo Gloria Retreat
she is planning for next October.
Thank you Jen for posting here today.
God Always Tips the Scale to Love
Drawing a line in the sand wasn’t working.
And when she expected more harsh words or another “pat” on
the rear, I instead scooped her up and held her, this six-year old body, in the
same way you might cradle a newborn. And I started to sing her favorite song
while I carried her into my bedroom to sit in the rocking chair that was once
my grandmother and my great-grandmother’s before that.
We rocked back and forth, her huddled against my chest,
wrapped tight in a hand-made blanket that had come from my grandmother’s house.
We listened to the low creaking and we inhaled the scent of the loved ones
since passed on, wrapped up tight in the love that has covered us many time
over.
As I ran my hands, pressing flesh into the oak grains, as I
curled my fingers around the chair’s arm, I imagined my grandmother’s hand upon
mine. A simple reminder those times I had drawn the line and my grandmother
chose love instead of exerting power. My grandmother, the one with the direct
line to my heart, taught me the pull of unconditional love. She taught me to
see to the heart and not worry so much about demanding those things that just
need time to grow.
Rocking my daughters, scooping them up and covering them
with a blanket, responding to them with unexpected tenderness – this is what
God does with me most of the time. The thing is because I am always braced for
the heavy hand, the punishment, the look of disappointment on His face, I don’t
allow myself to see, much less receive, the gentleness that He extends to me.
Recently, I’ve set out on a journey to rid my life of
scales, the tit-for-tat way that I have lived my life thus far (you can read
more about that here).
As such, I am hypersensitive to my thought processes these days and I realize
how hard I must fight to live a life free of the continual weighing that goes
on in my mind. I realized last night as I closed my eyes to pray that these
thoughts were rolling through my mind:
Well, you didn’t read
your bible today. How can you expect Him to welcome you?
Gosh, all those prayer
requests from the Soli Deo Gloria girls last week, and you want to ask Him for help on your marathon?
Clearly, you have not
held up your end of the deal. You need to get with it or your going to lose the
relationship you’ve enjoyed with Him.
All of these sentences boil down to one thing – Since I have
not…He will not.
And yet, He does. But, I have to choose to believe that He
understands my shortcomings and still loves me anyway.
I have to choose to believe that when I am screaming (on the
inside) at the top of my lungs, He doesn’t long to match my voice in all its
rage or sadness.
I have to choose to believe that He instead wants to cover
me in a blanket and rock me, until my heart can be calm again.
But there is a choice here: I can continually weigh myself until I feel some semblance
of “just” or “righteous enough” and then approach the throne.
Or, I can choose to accept that a contrite heart, He has yet
to deny. I can choose to see the gentleness and turn from the wrath of my own
self-inflicted hand. I can choose to see that His grace, His sacrifice will
always tip the scales to love, acceptance, and freedom.
How about you? Do you
allow yourself to see the mercy and grace He offers you or do you judge
yourself by your own standards?
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