goodness gracious — such is life

I think I think too much.

My mind is a ceaseless washing machine of thoughts, stuck in a never-ending spin cycle of the most minuscule blurbs (is oat milk even good for you? what is the actor that played Bob on the Suite Life of Zack & Cody up to now?) and the larger, looming terrors of human life (am I enough for the people I so desperately want to be enough for? do I even have a purpose and, if I do, am I living it well?). Sloshing around, emerging suddenly and vanishing just as quickly, occasionally driving me to insanity. Thinking, always.

More recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about grace. I tend to try my best to stay away from such abstract concepts, because I like when things make sense. I like when things are rational and I don’t have to ask too many questions and I can rest in knowing that nearly everyone agrees that x is true and y is false and z is a universal fact. But grace.

Grace keeps showing up. Grace keeps showing up because I keep messing up. And other people keep messing up. And no matter how hard we try to fight, tooth and nail, to prove that we are not Broken, we will continue to mess up because that is precisely what we are. And every time, grace will follow.

And every time, without fail, grace wrecks me. It strips me of the worldly lies I’ve trained myself to think, and internalize, and believe. It twists the knife that lives in my heart that is engraved with the terrifying truth that ‘you do not deserve what you have’. It forces me to stare into the eyes of my sin, and dares me to blink. Grace doesn’t make any sense. But its lack of logic is precisely what makes grace grace. Grace doesn’t make any sense, but I have seen it, experienced it, and known it and—despite my best efforts to hide from its penetrative glance—it has known me.

There have been people who have looked me in the eyes and lied, unabashedly.

People who have planted destructive words in my heart that have bred venomous thoughts and eroded my ability to think of myself as worthy.

People who have held me in their arms and let me bask in the unparalleled warmth of feeling loved and cherished, and then left me.

People who have told me that I matter and then treated me like I do not.

People who have taken, taken, taken.

And I am no better.

I have screamed obscenities in the faces of the people that I am certain will let me, because they love me.

I have made promises to people knowing full-well the emptiness that they hold.

I have been so utterly self-concerned that I let the chaos of the flammable thoughts in my own poisonous mind become a wildfire that had no regard for the hearts around me.

I have been so hell-bent on self-destruction that I refused to acknowledge the ways in which my actions were also destructive towards others.

I have taken, taken, taken.

Yet these people remain despite the hurt they have caused me. I remain despite the insurmountable pain I have caused others. Love remains, despite all of this. Grace endures.

I don’t know why. Nobody deserves grace. I do not deserve grace. But every morning it is offered to us in the moment we open our eyes, every second it is offered to us in the breath we find in our lungs, every day it is offered to us in our Savior, bloody and bruised, hanging on the cross.

Grace endures and I don’t know why and I will continue to be infuriatingly confused by it, but I will also continue to receive it. And I will continue to offer it. And everyone everywhere will continue, because of grace.