Grace

The name of the game when it comes to our dirt is grace. It takes grace to embrace who we are, and it takes grace to change the things about ourselves that we can change. 

But grace is hard. 

One of the reasons that it's hard is because we've been conditioned against it. 

Here's what I mean:

There are things about myself that I don't like. Things about my dirt that I don't like. Things that I think create barriers for me in this world, that complicate the things I try to do and the relationships in which I try to do them. But the primary reason that I feel so much tension with these things is because others have been so generous in pointing them out to me over the years. In kind and not-so-kind ways. These are the things that others have always cited as "wrong" about me. Or that I am "doing" "wrong." 

We are a people who are shaped in many ways by social pressures. Almost as much, sometimes it seems, as we have been shaped by God. We have spent our lives listening to the world tell us what we are doing wrong, what we should be doing better, what we should be doing different. 

In some ways, this is good because it can open us to our blind spots, to help us understand in new ways how the ways that we act and interact and interpret the world can be wounding to those around us. Unintentionally, of course, but wounding, nonetheless. I can admit that there are those in this world that I have hurt just by being the kind of dirt that I am. I can't change my dirt, but I can temper its expression in some ways so that I do not so severely wound those that I love...hopefully. 

But in other ways, this isn't so good. Because it can create in us a self-hatred or self-loathing, a lack of empathy for ourselves. A misunderstanding of our own dirt. It can create in us an insecurity and a constant sense of self-doubt. Because we're always aware that at least one person out there doesn't like who we are, at least one doesn't approve of the way we are, and we assume there are probably others. So we can start to feel isolated, or to isolate ourselves, because who we are is not wholly received and is even sometimes condemned, degraded. This is not good. There are things about our dirt we simply cannot change. 

Therein lies the rub. We want to be mindful that we are not solitary beings, but sometimes, the social pressures are so high that there's no amount of grace we can have for ourselves that would be sufficient to overcome them. 

It takes a certain strength. 

At the end of many of my days, I feel like a failure as a human being because my dirt gets in the way of my being a "proper" member of society, I guess. This is the condemnation of the ungraceful few speaking. This is the way that their condemnation has gotten into my soul, and it makes it hard to have grace for myself. Because the thing that I least want to be is one of those persons who very abrasively declares, "This is who I am. Deal with it." I recognize that my dirt is my dirt, but I also recognize it needs to be tempered. I never want to be obstinate about my broken things. That's not helpful, and it's not healthy. 

As a child of God, I am learning to push back on this some. Because yes, the condemnation gets into my soul in an unhealthy way, but there's a message of God, too - sparked by things like the verse in Jeremiah that kicked off this week's discussion - that God likes the dirt He made me from. So much so that every time He's reshaped me, in big and small ways, He's used the very same dirt to do it. I am the way that I am for a reason, and somehow, it's going to reveal His glory. Somehow, some way, some day. 

And this is how I start developing grace for myself. By tapping into this message to my soul, by knowing that maybe I'm not always liked, but I am always loved. I am beloved. And that's what is most important. 

So maybe there is grace. And maybe it's amazing after all.