I’m your typical firstborn. I love rules. Rules and boundaries make me feel safe. When I was falling in love with Christ as a teenager, somehow I latched on to the “list” of what a “good Christian girl” does. Grace wasn’t even a word in my vocabulary, because I had the rules. Keeping the rules in high school and college were easy. Do this, don’t do this.  Check and check. Somehow when I became a mom, the rules got foggy.  Maybe because it was suddenly “a good mom spanks”, but also “spanking is harmful”, all backed with plenty of scripture.  Then there was the attachment versus scheduling, all with plenty of backing.  Vaccinate or don’t. Homeschool, public or private? Forget about when I began working from home and leading others.  Trying to have that ever elusive sense of balance was impossible.  I was either workaholic or stellar mom.  I couldn’t seem to do both. All of a sudden, these rules in life that kept me safe were replaced with the overwhelming sense that I was failing EVERYWHERE.  When you have a genetic tendency towards massive anxiety and panic attacks, this is a perfect storm.  All I wanted was to be the best mom that I could and to do it in a way that honored Christ and EVERYONE had an opinion and plenty of people were more than happy to inform me how I was doing it wrong.  I spent years, YEARS feeling like I was the absolute worst mom, wife, friend, woman out there.  That while everyone knew what they were doing, I was a gigantic fraud that had not a clue.  I would lie in bed nightly and recap my day.  Actually, I would recap my failings each day.  The way I yelled at one child, the way I snapped here, the way my house was a wreck. I would fall asleep crying wondering why I couldn’t just be the godly mom my heart so longed to be.  Why can’t I do it all right?  On the rare occasion that the day went smooth, that the kids were happy, that I had actually done my makeup and made dinner, I went to bed knowing it was a fluke and waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Throw in approximately 200 panic attacks that crippled me over the years (actually way more than that) and I wondered how the rules had failed me.  How they went from safe to impossible to meet?  That’s the thing though, if I had been able to dot all the “i’s” and cross all the “t’s”, what need would I have for a Savior?  I was attempting to be my own savior and I was terrible at it.  And that is where grace found me.  Grace.  That word elicits such an emotional response from so many.  Some recoil because they think that people use it as an excuse to just keep sinning (and some do, but that’s not grace).  Some use it for everything.  For me, grace saved me.  It saved me from me.  It saved me from the impossible comparisons.  Grace.  Because our heavenly Father knew that we couldn’t do all the things.  He knew that we couldn’t follow all of the rules.  Oh the Jewish people had tried. They had laws.  They had laws for their laws.  Their laws became a prison of impossible expectations that no one could meet.  No one could get it all right.  That’s why we need grace.  Because He knew.  He knew that we would so desperately want to please Him and we would fail. Over and over again.  Grace.  Because this world is a mess and there is only one Savior.  Grace.  The ultimate sacrifice that covers all my sins and saves my soul.  And yours.  Grace.  Because in this world where He tells us “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind and love your neighbor as yourself”, He knows that is IMPOSSIBLE to do without a blanket of grace.  As I scroll social media daily, it is the one thing that is so obviously lacking.  So many are so certain of every single thing. So certain that they know the exact perfect order for things to run. So certain that they know all the truths.  And the older I get, the more I realize how very little I know. How LESS certain I get on so many things.  That I learn to view things from the perspective of others and those perspectives change so many things. And my goal is to always shift that perspective to the Word and see how He would view the situation. The one truth I hold to is the truth that His grace knew.  He knew I couldn’t find my way to Him on my own.  The truth that His sacrifice, giving His life so that I and you and everyone that will accept that truth can truly live.  Truth, His Truth and Grace. It’s the only thing I know. It’s the only way for these chains to break. It’s the only thing that won’t fail me.  I will fail me.  I will fail you.  I will fail Him.  He will never fail us.  And grace without truth is no grace at all.  Grace. Because we will continue to fail one another.  Grace. Because we will continue to get it wrong, no matter how hard we try.  Grace. Because once it TRULY finds you, you will find yourself in a puddle of humility, knowing that He is the only one worth comparing oneself to and that His love for you is so over powering and that His love for the world is so earth shattering and that our sole purpose should be to make His glory known, not our own.  Grace. Because even now I’m sure that I’m getting things wrong.  He molds me daily and shapes this form into what He has planned and I’m finally resting in that process.  Grace. Because as Paul said in Romans “I’ll continue to do that that I don’t want to do. And what I want to do, I won’t do.”  Grace. Because even in the failing, He is correcting and lifting us out of the mire, embracing and changing.  I want to be open to that process and not waste one moment. Grace.