More Than Enough

I cannot say for sure who, or where exactly b/c only fuzziness remains but it was high school and a girl's voice that ushered in the words that echo in me still 18 years later, "You think you're a Christian, but you aren't."

I do remember how weird it felt, in that moment, for someone to refer to me as a Christian.  I don't think I'd ever called myself that before.

High school for me was nothing but two things... pretty care free and f.u.n.  That about sums it up.  I remember our sophomore year, our girls' bball team went to semi state.  If memory serves me (and you'll see by this post it doesn't!), they played against a team they'd already beaten once by some ridiculous number of points.  I was supposed to go on this Christian retreat that weekend, and had a deal w/ my mom that if the girls won the first game that morning, I'd skip the weekend retreat in order to cheer the night game as well.  All I remember is being ahead but then in the last few minutes watching the score board move in the wrong direction right down to the final seconds and a big L for our team.  I would have wanted a win no matter what, but that day, so selfishly, I wanted a W all the more b/c so didn't want to leave all the fun and go to this retreat.   But my mom didn't forget the deal and we were off asap.

Only a few things about that weekend remain w/ me, like being inundated with personal stories of how people came to know the love of Christ.  But at the end of the 2 1/2 day retreat I can't say I felt any different than when I arrived.  It wasn't until I got home that evening... sitting in my room going through a lot of the things we'd been given that I was overwhelmed with the sense that heaven was my destiny and that it was a gift I'd done nothing to earn.  It was the moment I know to have caught a glimpse of what no conference or time or anything but Jesus can truly shed adequate light on and that is God's grace.

The miraculous thing about the blood of Christ is just how completely and perfectly it redeems the broken despite how it looks on the outside.   I think it's natural to want redemption to come in a pretty package but I've yet to see that.  And broken things are cumbersome and they take time to heal.  So grateful for the way he's loved me. In the moments where I in some way do seem to catch up to where he's been leading I'm always first amazed by the amount of patience he exhibited in the process.   He has always taken me right where I am.

I was coming through Washington last Saturday and stopped at my brother's.  Lily, his middle child, came running and hugged only to shortly run off yelling, "I have something for you!"  She returned with this bracelet... (that's found a home in my car)

...so excited and telling me all about how she made it.  Then she listed off why she put each one on - fish b/c we all go fishing, heart b/c I love hearts, sun - i think she said b/c I'd just come in from Florida, i forget that one! and when she shared the crosses she said b/c I was a Christian.  I'm glad she thinks so.  She couldn't know how fitting it is for me to have the crosses as bookends to the bracelet.  A reminder that the Author of Salvation is the book end to my life, and faith is believing in him to be more than able, more than enough for all of me.

Leaving you with Natalie Grant,  "The Real Me."