How Grace Found Me :: {Part 1}

You don’t always get to pick where Grace will lead you. I found myself transplanted in a foreign land, surrounded by people I did not know, far away from my Good Girl life plan with only this promise to cling to:

Do not call to mind the former things,

Or ponder things of the past.

Behold, I will do something new,

Now it will spring forth;

Will you not be aware of it?

I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,

Rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43: 18-19

And so I scribbled this on a piece of notebook paper and put it on my refrigerator door and I tried with all my Good Girl might to believe it. I did not know at the time, He was showing me you have to go through it – to really live it. Now, nearly  9 years past, I’m living in that something new. I’ve seen Him make a roadway out of a wilderness so dark and desperate that it took His Word made flesh to pull me out of the pit.  He has been every kind of faithful.

So you’d think, after such a wilderness experience that this Good Girl would not go back to her Try Hard Life. Why would she?  She had been set free from the rules of the game she herself had scripted.  Not so. Good Girls die hard.

And so the story continues.  Part II:

Wife.

Mother of 4.

Home schooler.

Bible teacher.

Blogger.

Sitting in my room holding my youngest girl, and thoughts invade my head that I have never spoken. What would they think if I voiced them?  Would I seem ungrateful?  How would I talk my way out of how horrible it sounds? Sadness covers my soul like a blanket that I can’t wrestle free of.  So I do what any Good Girl would.

I do.
I get up.
I make dinner.
I stuff those feelings of lonely, inadequate, and lost down deep,  and I do.
More.
Faster.
Harder.

Until I break open and anger pours out of my soul like a violent rushing wind and I’m destroying with my mouth the one thing I have seen Him build in spite of me. The blanket of sadness is replaced by guilt and shame and I am silenced and forgiven by those I love most.  For the second time in my life, I am in a situation where I can’t Good Girl my way out of it. I am overwhelmed.  I am seeing my life for what it is: I am not enough.

This is how Grace for the Good Girl found me. Coping and living out my life without so much as a clue as to how to unravel the story.  Good Girls don’t like to draw too much attention, and I was sure I was too tired to figure it out on my own.  The mirror is held up.  I’m seeing and looking and not liking at all what I see.  And my biggest fear has always been that same:

What will they say?  What about my reputation?  Will they still love me?

And I’m trying to hear His words ring in my heart once again:

Grace says you are working from a place of acceptance.

Finally, with book in hand, I’m not making happy little highlights at all. I’m opening doors in my heart that hold stuff I thought I’d dealt with.  I’m facing the Good Girl looking her straight in the eye.  But this time, I have a friend.  A tribe.  And I’ve said it out loud:

My name is Stacey.  I’m a Good Girl trying hard to let go of my Good Girl ways. It isn’t pretty.  It isn’t fun, but if you would be so kind to let me hash it out here on the page, I’d be so grateful.

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Next Tuesday, we will begin discussing Emily Freeman’s book, Grace for the Good Girl.  We will cover what grabbed your heart from Part 1.  I’d love for you to join us, whether you have the book or not.  I will be praying for you!

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{the winner of the book giveaway is Barbie who blogs at My Freshly Brewed Life!}