Life's Been Good

Morning one and all,

I’m sure some of you are somewhat appalled by the things that come from the tips of my fingers and the dark recesses of my mind each week. I also know that what I intend to say is not always what is heard. For instance, last week when I said I would like to sell myself into slavery some of you thought that I was overwhelmed with life, or that things were just horrible and I wanted to get out of a mess.

While I would like to get out of a mess, things aren’t horrible. In fact, they are better than they have been in a long, long time. Over the past 5 years God has blessed me so much that I have been able to eliminate somewhere around $30,000 of debt. I have two decent jobs that treat me very well. It is me that doesn’t treat me very well, nobody else, especially not God. I am blessed in so many ways. God is growing me up and changing me like never before. My life is really, really good.

As Joe Walsh sang in Life’s been good: Lucky I'm sane after all I've been through. Everybody says I'm cool (He’s cool). I can't complain but sometimes I still do. Life's been good to me so far.

Life, like baseball has been bery bery good to me. I am thankful for that. I really am. By the grace of God I have been able to almost dig myself out of the hole that I’ve been trapped in for most of my life. To be honest, the financial part of that hole is miniscule compared to all the other components.

To be sober for close to 20 years, married to a wonderful woman for 19, live in the same city (ok county) for over 20 years, and to have worked steadily for as long as I have are things that most people might take for granted but they are blessings of grace to me. They are things that I did not have the will or the power to do the first thirty years of my life.
Yes, the wheels of grace turn way too slowly for me some days. I have wasted over half of my life in true and real bondage; first to abuse and then to addiction so I could forget the pain. Now there is a huge part of me that wants more than anything to make up for lost time.

But the truth is there is no lost time. I needed, yes I can say it now, needed to be where I was back then, to feel the pain so bad that I needed to numb it and then experience the catastrophe of numbness so I could claw my way back to reality. I needed all of that in order to become whatever it is I’m supposed to become when I get big. From my point of view right now it looks like I’ve still got a long, long way to go to get big.

Yet I also know that the hole called my life could have been a whole lot deeper. I know where I could have gone but didn’t. I know of at least three friends who are or were in prison; one for murder, one for drugs and one for sex. Just a couple more turns on the path and I could have been at any of those destinations. I know friends who are dead or insane. I know plenty of people who refuse to change at all. They’re happy with numb. And I will admit that it is a good feeling, feeling no pain. But the goal isn’t feeling good; it is being good.

As you can tell by my emails I’m not all that excited about reality sometimes. Jesus certainly seemed a lot nicer when I thought life was pain free. But it wasn’t that Jesus was nicer but rather that I didn’t have a clear understanding of the fall. I didn’t know the depths of pain that it caused. I couldn’t taste the veil of tears because I was numb. I couldn’t relate to a man of sorrows. I thought Jesus was supposed to be Mr. Happy go lucky.

How can someone who has never known the depth of bondage in his own life in talk to people about freedom? They can’t. Someone who never knew they were lost doesn’t get all that excited about reaching their destination. It took me thirty years of being saved to realize that I was lost. It’s taken another 20 for me to get my true bearings in the real world. And though my footing is probably surer than it has ever been it still feels shaky because I’m standing on new legs, in new world and it’s not what I’m used to. Like Joe Walsh, I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime.

Today, I am thankful and very grateful for where I am. If I had any more I’d be able to avoid pain. If I had any less I might be overwhelmed by the weight. As it is, I’m at a place where I can’t be comfortable. There is a yearning for more. That ‘more’ is the fullness of salvation that I see in scripture. I’m not satisfied because I see the Word and I know my life and my life isn’t where scripture says salvation should be. So I press on to the higher calling.

I long to have the Word made manifest completely in my life. I long for the brokenness that I see inside me to be made whole. I long for the kingdom to be established in my heart and mind. And these things are being done. It’s just so slow that it makes me want to scream out with the saint’s under the altar in revelation: HOW LONG?

I truly am grateful to God for all that he has and is doing. I am a blessed man because God is saving me from myself a little each day. He’s not just saving me, he is growing me up, and though it is not what I would have asked for it; is what I need.

Life, as it is these days, is showing me the depth of my entanglements. God by his grace is slowly giving me both the will and the power to lay those entanglements aside. My heart is yearning for the day when I can run free the race sat before me.

Oh that wonderful day when I will be able to run without dragging chains behind me. Oh the day when the Word is completely manifest in my life. What a day of rejoicing that will be.

Grace and Peace,

Grandpa Grace