What My Heart Does

Rain pours from the morning sky. Clouds hang and darkness clings to the clouds.

I rollover and hit snooze again. My body not ready to meet the day, before I get out of bed my  heart begins:

You are going to be late. You hit snooze. You will never get your work-out done, blog post written, or get the dishes in the kitchen finished. You are already behind, why bother getting up any earlier? You have already failed.

I pick up the bag named failure and lift it on my shoulders. It weighs at my heart and mind. The clouds in the sky echo the cloudiness of my soul.

Children rise with expectations and needs. Their tears, disrespect, and frustration are food for my heart’s diatribe. I reason with my charges, but they remain angry, irritated. My nerves feel charged with electricity as stress vibrates through every fiber.

You are not enough. You can’t fill their needs. You are messing them up.

I forget the costume for the parade and have to run home. My boy is happy and unaffected by my lapse in memory as I get the costume on him as they walk out the door of their class.

You can’t even remember a simple costume. When will you get this mothering thing right?

It is as if I categorize God’s grace. It fits for my sin, but not my mistakes. He forgives me, offers me grace when I sin against His law, but my humanness, my mistakes don’t deserve grace.

Why do you think you can handle more children? You can’t even keep up with the ones you have. You have to be more–more organized, more prepared, more together.

Grace. It covers our sin, but it also covers our mistakes. It covers costumes that are forgotten, work-outs that don’t get done, boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner, medications that get left, appointments forgotten, running late. There is grace. Grace that is stronger than any sin or mistake. Grace that covers us for eternity. That same grace covers our inadequacies.

“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

Boast about my weaknesses? I prefer to hide them and pretend there are no weakness, but that is when I am weakest. When I hide my sin, mistakes, and weaknesses I dwell on them. My heart tells me I am a failure and I carry that baggage with me. But when I say I am weak, then God’s power can reign in me. His power is perfected in my weakness.

Will you join me in laying our weaknesses, sin, and mistakes down at the foot of the cross? Then God’s grace covers all our weaknesses and His power is perfected in us.