While eating my cereal and pondering my day, I turned on my TV which was on OWN (of course). It was an encore of Oprah's Farewell Event and Stedman was having words. He talked of how, with all her notoriety, she still brings her lunch to work everyday. As Oprah watched with tears in her eyes and threw a kiss his way, to her surprise Stedman introduced the incomparable Aretha Franklin who sang "Amazing Grace." Everyone knew that Aretha had had some major health challenges but stood flat-footed and belted out a rendition with the power and vocal stylings of her younger years.
If you've ever been lost and now you're found, that song stirs such gratitude to the God of all Grace who found you. That, for me, trumped what I had been taught God's only agenda was: sin and hell. For I was in church all my life and even "got saved" on my knees in my parent's bedroom, but I was as lost as lost could be. I knew church. I knew church culture and doctrine. People would even say I grew up in a Christian home. But I didn't know God for I didn't know myself.
I wasn't good enough. I wasn't holy enough. I always came up short. The rules were so tight and God seemed so hard to appease! I tried, God knows I tried. I so wanted to belong. I so wanted to be righteous. Yet, I was constantly tormented and afraid of being doomed to a fiery hell.
All my life, I felt God's presence. It wasn't hokey or mystical, it was a warm, caring presence; but it was often perverted by those around me who made it not holy enough, not spiritual, not compliant with the doctrine that those around me swore by. I prayed, I fasted, I tarried. Shoot, I got saved every Youth Revival but I was still lost. Everytime I'd hear, "if God were to come today, if you're not sure you'd go back with him, you'd better come to this altar," I would think of all that I lacked and how I kept messing up and would shamefaced come to the altar to beg for forgiveness.
So you see, God finding me was the most wonderful, awesome, amazing thing that ever happened in my life. I know it sounds weird given the torment I just described, but He showed me that was my environment but that wasn't Him. That is what people did based on where they were and how they were taught. They were still stuck in legalism, much like the Old Testament accounts; but hadn't really made the heart shift to grace. They read the letter but didn't truly get the spirit of the letter. He knew the good, the bad, the ugly, the eye-rolling, cussin under my breath me and said "you're enough." And if anything needs to be changed, God is God enough to do it. No one else gets a vote, not even the preacher. Not even the church culture. That, my friends was my salvation. He affirmed me as me.
Me, the person who hated going to Sunday School. Me, the person who hated midweek services. Me, the person who preferred to share a family breakfast than hurry to Sunday worship service. Me, the person who couldn't understand how by not paying tithes I was cursed with a curse. Me, the person who called a thing a thing much to the disapproval of those around me. Me, the woman who wasn't created to fit a religious box or to color inside the lines. Me!
So, while many might not be able to get with the person I've become, I know of God's Amazing Grace and I am abiding in a state of grace. I don't have to worry about messing it up. I live there. It's a of place rest. It's a place of foundness. I did everything I could to botch it up, but God accepted me with open arms and a chuckle because He knew I was finally getting it. I was finally getting why Christ came. As a result, I don't live with a sin-conscious, a hell-conscious or a devil-conscious. I live with a grace-conscious. I live with a found-conscious. I am free, unapologetically and hilariously FREE. This, my friends, is what the birth of the Christ Child means to me. He came to give His life so I could have mine. So tomorrow, should the Lord allow me to see it, I will celebrate this Season with more meaning and gratitude than ever before. And if He chooses to come and take me home before then and this is the last thing I write, it is well with my soul. For I was lost but now I'm found. Was blind but now I see.
