Spinach gives me heartburn. (Read this first, if you haven’t already.)
That last post was rather lacking, I think. Not that it wasn’t true, but I cut out a few paragraphs of it so I could put them in a more appropriate place. Naturally, I then forgot to put them back in. I’m smart like that. And what I left out was the redeeming part of the whole thing. Oops. Anyway, here’s the rest:
I didn’t confess all those (really rather fleeting) sins to you all without first taking them to my Father in Heaven and asking for both forgiveness and renewal. If I had, I would have been wrong to even write it. I wasn’t exposing my many flaws so I could give anyone an excuse to behave that way, but rather so I could show by example that this walk is hard, even for those who appear to know exactly what they’re doing.
You know what allows me to keep getting up, every time I fail? It’s the knowledge that my Savior isn’t sitting up in Heaven with a rod of lightening in his fist, just waiting for the moment I mess up so he can harpoon me with it. He expects it. He redeemed me once, for all time. Now we’re just working out the details.
God doesn’t need me to make Him look good. He’s the King of the Universe! Nothing I do will diminish Him. Nothing I do can benefit Him. The only thing standing between me and absolute insignificance in the universe is His perfect love. The whole time I’m down here messing things up, He’s loving me. He’s perfecting me. He’s teaching me. He’s forgiving me. If I couldn’t believe that, I’d give up, because I’m pretty sure I’m never going to get it 100% right.
Nothing soothes my perfectionistic soul like knowing that mercy will ever rain on me, and I’m free to keep trying again, day after difficult day, until He finally takes me home to the place where I can truly be perfect.
