Chewymom

Chewydad and I have spent almost our entire married life in churches and under teaching that had a lot of law in it. I love law. I crave rules. If you will just tell me how to live as a godly person, I’m on it. You can probably understand why I liked the Ezzo’s Growing Kids God’s Way series so much. It told me what to do and gave me a list of rules to follow so that I could produce godly kids. It was all so easy.

Until my husband wasn’t going along with my image. We began to struggle in our marriage, and suddenly looking perfect and following the rules wasn’t going so well for me. I felt and looked foolish in front of my Christian peers, because I no longer had my act perfectly together. My halo got tarnished.

Soon after the bottom fell out of my life of perfection, I found myself at a church where grace was preached. From the pulpit and even more so, in Bible study, I heard over and over and over, until it finally started to sink in, that my Christian walk was not about rules, it was about grace. If I had heard that message any time earlier, I think I would have either walked out the door or I would have tried to figure out way to manufacture that grace in my life. But because of the timing, I was at a low enough point that I just heard it and had to believe it.

I heard repeated that God is a loving Father. I heard that I was living as though I was an orphan. I began to grasp just how beautiful is the picture of adoption.

It was like I had been this little bud or seed, and suddenly I was being filled. I was growing…plumping up if you will, until what I was learning began to explode out of me. I was able to let go of so many of my wrong expectations of my husband and kids–expectations that were ultimately only about making me look like a godly wife and mother. I was able to truly love those who were struggling, because now I too was struggling. I wasn’t afraid to be friends with unbelievers any more. They weren’t going to corrupt my kids, and in fact, their struggles suddenly seemed a whole lot more like my own. It dawned on me that in reality, the only thing separating me from my unbelieving neighbors and friends was my hope in Christ. Our struggles, however, are really not that different.

I am thankful for the teaching I have been under. It has allowed me to move out from under the law and to really live as a daughter. It has allowed me to begin to think for myself again–religiously, politically, in terms of my role in this life. I have tackled issues and realized that I don’t necessarily think like everyone else in my town and my church. And that is okay! Well, it’s okay with me at least. I am free to come to my own conclusions about…oh…women’s issues, the environment, Obama, the economy, illegal aliens, aid to Africa, and even abortion.

Some might argue that there’s a name for this.

Mid. life. crisis.

I’m in “mid-life.”

I don’t think I’m in a crisis though.

But I am, in a sense, finding myself and my voice.

And that is why I am noticing a shift in what I am being taught. It isn’t that grace has been removed. But rules and law have crept back in. There’s a new tone of “this is how to live the Christian life.” And it isn’t about freedom any more. It is about the Ten Commandments. And being a submissive wife. And understanding difficult Presbyterian theology like sanctification and justification.

And suddenly this plump piece of fruit that was me has begun to shrivel.

Not in real life, of course, because no matter how I eat or exercise, shriveling and shrinking is not part of the picture. This is all figurative, as those who know me in real life can attest.

I am beginning to feel like a raisin who is having all of the plump, juicy goodness of the gospel sucked out by the parching, dry heat of rules and regulations and “godly living.” I’m sure I could live that way again. It’s kind of in my nature to see a rule and try to follow it. I suppose it always will be. My flesh kinda likes it. But my soul kicks and screams now, and begs to be released.

And I don’t really know where I’m going with this post other than to say that I am longing for the cool refreshing flow of the gospel over me again. I am missing the grace. I am longing for the soul-quenching, life-giving messages that my heart learned to love. I’m on a quest to find that again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Biblical Thinking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.