A Plea for Grace from the Biz Bag

I need grace--and not a little of it.

For the past few days I've been struggling with a lomg-standing, deep emotional hurt. Rage has been bubbling up inside me, despite my efforts to short-circuit it, ignore it, or anaesthetize it with stimulation and activities. I feel like I'm jumping up and down on a giant cork in the throat of an active volcano, desperate to prevent an eruption.

Today was a communion Sunday at church. Initially I wasn't going to partake, I felt I wasn't...what's the right word? Deserving? Clean? Together? Holy? and I didn't want to run the risk of "eating and drinking condemnation" to myself. But as the crowd filed past my seat and thinned, I heard a voice in me, warring with the voices telling me to stay seated, that I was unworthy and isufficiently "spiritual" for communion, saying "Go, partake. Communion is for you who AREN'T together, holy, perfect. Communion is for the UNdeserving. Communion is for the lumpy, the sinful, the broken and the half-healed.

So, afraid I was going to piss off God by tracking in mud on his nice white carpet, I stood up, went to the table, and ate my communion nibble. I then had to pee so I walked out to the lobby where the bathrooms are, and I met a guy I knew and we had a good talk for several minutes. I enjoyed seeing him again and talking with him.

I still struggle with believing I have to qualify for God's grace, that God doesn't give me as much as he gives Joe Bob because Joe Bob reads his Bible, prays, tithes, witnesses, attends church thrice weekly, et cetera. You know--all the "good Christian behaviors."

Whereas it seems me who does few of those things gets the left hand of relationship from our Father. Doesn't the "golden child" in any family get all the rewards and the affection? I feel like I'm perpetually slouching in the kingdom of God.

Yes, I know the problem lies in my misperception of God and His; that knowledge doesn't make this any easier, it just means I know there's a way out of it. SOMEwhere, dammit. And, pain in the spiritual and emotional ass that it is, I won't give up looking for it, hoping for it, trusting God will somehow get me to it in time.

LOL...oddly, this is how I know God loves me. Any other deity would have drop-kicked my whiny ass into the Biz Bag by now. But God is long-suffering, and I mean LOOOONG. And He absolutely does not give up. That simultaneously fills me with joy and makes me weep in despair. When will He stop pursuing me and abandon me to the fate I richly deserve?