Maria, Full of Grace

Maria, full of Grace.

I am Maria and I am full of grace. You can be too.

Well, you can't be Maria, but you can be full of grace. God's Grace.

All you have to do is admit you are a sinner, and ask God to come into your heart, and that's it.

Done. Graced.

Ok, here's the rub. You are graced and blessed when in reality you really have no right, whatsoever, to have such tender mercies bestowed upon you. Hence, salvation and grace. And for that reason you have to stop acting the way you were. And by acting I mean sinning. And by sinning I mean over-drinking, over-eating, over-talking, over-judging. And this is hard. 'Cause we don't think we are over-anything most of the time, 'cause we just plodding along lalalalalala...God loves me, I love Him, lalalalala.

I have done most of these things plenty of times. Drank too much, smoked too much, ate too much, judged too much....and I sometimes still do. I am not proud of it, but I am not gonna lie or hide it. And I don't want to keep repeating it. 

I do it because I am not feeling the grace I have been given. I let how I feel dictate how I behave. Big mistake. I have already been graced, but if on one particular day I'm not feeling it, I just behave badly. Knucklehead. Once you've been graced, it's done. Don't let your emotions lead you to believe you are not loved, or not graced. His Word is His Word, whether you feel it or not. Actually, feelings have absolutely nothing to do with God's grace.

So like I said earlier, you can be graced too, you are loved immensely by the One who made you. You and I may wake up feeling empty, but we are still full of grace. 

No matter how I feel, I still will ALWAYS be Maria, full of grace... so, right before that glass of Moscato hits my lips and forks full of cake go flying down my throat and right before I chime in about something or someone...Grace, Maria, Grace. 

You're full of it.

Instead of being all tucked in, I am all junked up

Some people are all tucked in. Everything looks right. Manicured. I am the opposite. I am all junked up. 

I don’t know how to go from all junked up back to all tucked in. Not that I was ever tucked in anyway....There’s no silver linings playbook here. No romantic movie ending from a junked up feeling inside. The feeling you’re losing it. Whatever it is. 

You can’t take much more and you feel that you don’t even have the right to feel mental suffering, because so many people in the world are suffering physically and mentally. Horrid suffering. So why do you suffer? I suffer for my children.

How do I take my child’s suffering, swallow it whole and relieve her of the mental and physical anguish? I want to be the pill she needs to calm her down, I want to make everything better, just like I did when she was little. But she's not little anymore, she's a young woman, living far away in another state, feeling alone, feeling the stress of being far and away. I feel it too. I feel it for her. I was never that brave. I never graduated college, picked up and moved 3000 miles away from everything I knew, to start anew. 

Unfortunately, as with everything, even bravery, there comes a cost.

I send her books, tell her to read page 110 of Battlefield of the Mind, read 1000 Gifts again, read Fearless, not to worry, things will work out. Don't be so hard on yourself. Pray, I tell her, pray. Little does she know my praying and reading are for me just as much as for her. 

Don't worry if you change your mind and decide this career choice isn't for you. We will figure it out. That should be a bumper sticker.....we will figure it out!. I'd buy it and slap it on my bumper.

I want to tell my daughter it's all gonna work out, but I don't that it is. Does anybody? 

All I know is I the more tucked in I want to her and I to be, the more junked up we become.