The Good Christian

I grew up going to church.  I became a christian at the age of 5. I went to church on Sunday morning and Sunday night.  Midweek I went to Awana and then to youth group as I got older.  I spent a week every summer at a Christian camp.  I volunteered in Sunday school classes for little kids. I was a good kid who stayed out of trouble.  The church and christianity have been a part of my life as far back as I can remember.

I am a people pleaser by nature.  Faith always came easy to me for the most part.  There’s a part of me that has struggled for years though.  It comes with the idea of the “good” christian.  The church I grew up in was fairly legalistic, and honestly, I think legalism is the noose around the neck of the church today.  The general idea that I was taught in church is that you read your bible everyday, you pray everyday, you have a time of “devotion” everyday, you choose to be good and to do the right thing.  It’s something that you “do” if you’re a “good” christian.  I learned the stories of the Bible, I memorized verses, I learned the christian answers and the christianese lingo.  I wanted to be a “good” christian.

As I got older and life happened, I had a hard time finding time to read the bible.  Sure I had time to read, but time to read in quiet and actually have the words come to life...not so much.  My prayer life dwindled because I felt like my prayers hit the ceiling and fell back to the floor.  My faith was always there, I knew the right answers, but I didn’t feel the closeness.  Being a people pleaser, I struggled with the lack of intimacy and felt like I wasn’t pleasing to God.  I felt unworthy of his presence because I wasn’t a “good enough” christian.  This idea snowballed as I felt more ashamed with my lack of “goodness” and in turn I pulled further away from my time with God.

The reality of it all is that I am not a habitual person.  I am creative minded.  A dreamer.  I am not a morning person.  God made me that way.  I have a love/hate relationship with structure.  I need it, yet find it binding and suffocating at times.  I am not a “do your one hour of devotions at the same time first thing in the morning everyday” type of girl.  I used to be ashamed of that, because after all that’s what good christians do.  Right?  It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that I was not a “good” christian as defined by what I had been taught.

Then the years of motherhood came, and holy-moly, did that throw me for a loop!  I had my first three boys in just under three years, and I was in what felt like a permanent state of survival mode.  I struggled.  I cried.  I was depressed.  I reached depths of loneliness that I didn’t know existed.  I was exhausted.  I wanted to be this amazing spiritual saint for my kids to look up to and I failed miserably.  I wanted to be a good christian, a good leader, a good wife, a good mom, a good friend, a good worker, a good mentor...I wanted to “do” it all.  I couldn’t do it.  I broke.  I wasn’t enough.

Do you know what happened?  I found GRACE!  It was the part of my faith I had not fully grasped from the get go.  Grace is defined as “the free and unmerited favor of God”.  FREE, not earned!  In my brokenness I held up my hands and said, “I’m not enough.  There is nothing I can DO to ever be enough.”  I know that Jesus saved me that night way back when I was five years old.  I accepted him as my savior.  But, it wasn’t until I was broken on my knees in a puddle of tears as an adult with kids of my own that I finally acknowledged his grace and accepted the fact that he finds favor in me just the way I am.  There is nothing I can “do” to make him love me more or less.  This realization was so freeing.  I didn’t have to be a “good” christian.  I just had to be me...the me that God purposed me to be.  The me that he planned this amazing life for.  I let go of the legalistic views that I struggled with for so long.  I accepted the things that were unique and different about me because that’s how God made me.  There isn’t a cookie cutter christian life to follow.  He made us different for a purpose.  He created us to bring him glory and there is so much beauty in the uniqueness of each person he created.

I have friends who do their one hour devotion every morning first thing because that is what works for them.  They find God in those moments, and I love it that they are habitual in it because that’s how God made them.  For me, I pray in the car (out loud because I can).  Sometimes I pray in the shower because it is one of the only times of the day that I get to be by myself. I meet God singing a worship song when I’m subbing at the Christian school my kids go to.  I see him in his creation in nature where I just soak in his presence without saying a word.  I hear him speak when I read his Word (the bible) while trying to find some encouraging words for a friend.  I cry out to him in the wee hours when I just need him to be my strength.  I thank him in moments where joy is found when my kids giggle and when we snuggle.  My intimacy and faith looks different than the “good” christian idea I was raised on and that’s okay.  I choose to embrace grace, I choose to embrace who God created me to be, and I choose to love those around me for who they are.  I find joy in creation because God made me creative.

It’s not about being a “good” Christian.  It’s about believing in who Jesus is and what he’s done.  It’s about accepting grace and loving him because he’s downright amazing.  It’s about loving people around us and extending grace because God created them to be loved unconditionally.

As I raise my boys up in this ‘oh so crazy’ world of ours, I want them to know God’s grace, and I want them to know that they are loved fiercely and unconditionally.  I want them to accept who God created them to be, and then go love the heck out of the people God has placed in their lives.

I’m not a “good” Christian.  I’m just a girl who loves Jesus, who will never fully understand why he loves me, but I’m thankful that he does.  And I will spend the rest of my days loving the people around me in hopes that they will know his love too because that’s why God made me.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.” - Ephesians 2:8-9.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.” 
- I Corinthians 13:13