What Grade are You?

When I was a girl, I made straight A’s.  I’ve mentioned it here.  Somehow in my mind, I graded myself.  I was an A.  Even though socially, I was probably a C, (actually probably an F, but that girl would never have given herself an F.  I do realize she is me, but we are not the same). And I was a people pleaser, so even if I would have received a C socially in most cases, I almost always worked to receive an A doing whatever it took to make someone happy.  Overall, I would have given myself an A, as if I was somehow better than most.  And…I was good.  On the goodness scale, I would have also received an A.

Then I went to college, and while there, I did not make all A’s, but mostly A’s, a few B’s, and a C now and then.  I went to every campus ministry until I found what I liked and then still attended many ones sometimes, so again in the goodness factor, I was probably an A+.  In the academic factor, I was an A-.  And so I lived my life, unknowingly grading myself.  I knew God at this point, but I didn’t yet understand the richness and the depth of the Gospel.

Then I graduated and could not get a job.  I was no longer a perfect A anymore.

Then I got a job, and let’s be honest people, I was a ditz in many things, like working a copier.  I could not stand this about myself, so I clearly perfected my copying skills, and everything in which I did not measure up.  I worked to please.  And really what else can anyone do in a work environment?  But the thing is, I wasn’t good enough at work.  Someone always seemed to do the job better than me even though I was trying to be perfect and please everyone.  Somebody else always got the added bonus, and I learned I was not an A.  I was probably a B.  I was friendly and I would like to think that people liked me pretty well, but I was also still shy at times, backwards, and fearfully afraid of speaking in meetings, giving presentations, and questioning authority.  I was very aware of these things, and my self-confidence was lowered because well, I could not perform well enough, and I was sent to classes like “Assertiveness Skills.”  These classes made me angry because a corporate entity was trying to change my identity and I did not like not having control over myself and who I wanted to be.  And let’s face it, I loved a boy who didn’t love me back, and nothing like that had ever happened to me before.  I was perhaps a D.  In the friendship factor, I had gone from A to F, real fast, and I loathed myself.

Then I found another boy, got married, and I was a total F at marriage.

FAIL © by amboo who?

Then we had kids, and again, I was about a D.  But I worked real hard with the first one to make myself feel like an A again.  Then I had a second, and for a while, I was still an A.  But then he crawled, and I became about an A-.  😉  But something magically began happening between my second and third child.  I couldn’t take care of two children very well, and I was a total F.  As much as I tried, I never completely got it right and I could not control my kids.  Children have a strange way of bringing you to this realization.

Before I had kids, I attended bible college, and I studied that the Law exists so that we could know how we never measure up to God’s standard, but at the time, I didn’t really know how that applied to life after becoming a Christian.

At some point before Lisabeth, I realized that under the Law, I was always completely and utterly an F.  Not just me, but everyone around me is an F.  Big fat failures.

But then God brought me to a deeper understanding of His grace right around the time I had Lisabeth.  And so for the past two years, I have lived learning to let go of the grade.  What I realized is that God has chosen me, who is so unworthy, to be His.  And this is grace.  He wants me even though I am an F.  Even though I may continuously disobey or be anything good enough for His standards.  And what He does is even though I stink, am a zero in many ways, He places His Spirit in me, and makes me Holy and begins His perfecting work in me.  Why other than absolute and utter LOVE would anyone do this?  Why would God notice me if I am so unworthy?  He didn’t choose me because I could or because I was good, He simply chose me because He loved me.  We often think we are chosen because we did something right.  Truth is, we are chosen apart from our merit.

I am truly nothing without Christ.  And those rules I should follow?  He helps me obey them because He knows I’ll keep failing without Him.  So while it was a super great revelation to know that God had sent Jesus to save me, the depth and richness of the Gospel was bigger and better than I’d ever begun to imagine.  His love, grace, mercy are so much better.  So, my friend, I am sorry to say that we are big ginormous F’s on the report card of life, but God gives us ALL of Himself anyway, and there is NOTHING better than that!

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”  Ephesians 3:16 – 19