Maybe It's Not About Knowing Better

I went shopping the other day, but not the self-indulgent, treat yourself kind that blows your hair back in slow motion as you walk out of the department store with bags lining your twig arms. This was more of an errand - and a desperate one - like when you're a quarter way through the recipe and nothing in your fridge substitutes for whole milk. Only it's violently summer in Texas and the shorts you've worn two years in a row won't button anymore. You accuse your dryer of shrinking and your dresser of lying, but you crouch down beside the clothes you've combed over and pay your dues to the one that wore them. And this has never been your ball and chain, but now you're embarrassed about these markings on your legs and you tug at your cheeks wondering how it got there, too. Does this happen when you get married?

I gave myself a hefty, theoretical slap in the face to be better than comparison, to speak the truth about Psalm 139:14 (praising God in His good-making) and to shut down a legion of earthly, ephemeral lies before they're overflowing out of my own mouth. But that's not it, I thought. I know that my home is not here. I'm not sick about other women and how I'm not them. I'm not living from the belief that I'm unlovable, not today. I'm simply heavier than I used to be and sad that my pants've made enemies with my waist and mad that I have to do something about it.

In any case, doing something about it meant that on our precious day off, we would end up at the God-forsaken outlet mall. Fifty-fifty chance of being murdered or trampled in broad daylight, but it was a risk Ryan said I was safe in taking. We trip behind a slew of too-slow walkers and rifle through these half-priced garments that are just about as useful to me as the bathing suit section. The first three stores were a bust, but surely the 654 others had something, anything to offer. I'm already worn out, I want an Auntie Anne's soft pretzel, and I'm starting to think that this was my gravest mistake. He turns the corner and says he's found the promised land - a beachy place hoarded with denim - so I slump in after him and collect a few that might work on the way to the dressing room.

I stand and look for a real long time. The mirror is small and I take up the whole thing. My knees are more folded than I remember, and I'm distracted by these overage dimples that aren't endearing anymore. Maybe I could get away with it if my skin was darker. I undershot the sizes by a mile, and there's a pile of six 'no's' to my right waiting on their legitimate owners whose thighs don't touch. I think for a second about retiring my pride and settling on the larger ones, but there aren't many of those to choose from, and I'll probably just do this by myself next week. None of these will work for me today, I admit to the young store clerk. I should have left them hanging in the graveyard, but she thanks me, begins granting second chances, and reorganizes my debts onto the rack that I had plundered five minutes before. Feeling delicate and flustered, I hurry to the exit, only to be met by my sweet husband who has found "his perfect pair of jeans. They fit like a glove, and they're on sale, too!" I give him a grin through my teeth and a thumbs up from outside. I am so happy for him.

I have a salad for lunch and finish my afternoon trying on shoes - size 9 - presumably the only part of me that hasn't changed in a good while.

. . .

I learned something about grace that day and about its fundamental gift of governing. Grace seems sweet, and it is - it notices our tendency to break, but more than a sympathetic friend who comforts and consoles, grace demands authority. It justifies and advocates. It declares apostleship and shares a name with the King of Glory. I learned that it doesn't reserve itself for the pornography you said you'd been done with or the afternoon that you emasculated your husband in public or the adulterous, third-tier sins that really need a good lather of it (because those simply don't exist and, in fact, are indiscernible from any other time wilting flesh decides to outlast the Spirit). I learned that until we're blue in the face, we might recite that the ground is level at the foot of the cross and speak about being a proud image-bearer of Christ and still find ourselves in the morning lapping up from the fountain of approval, shying away from mirrors and embarrassed that he'd have to cover for us another day of frailty. But I also learned that grace is rightly apportioned for those moments of knowing better.

I hear people - in all of their best intentions - minimize suffering (however large or small) and exclaim to be grateful that at least you're breathing! And I wondered if maybe the grace-giver resonated more with those same ones who were breathing but knew they had no choice in the matter. But now they're here, and I guess just help us make the best of it.

Scripture is real, and I'm thankful for that. But we discipline ourselves with ones like, our bodies are temples to steward in honor and then we give ourselves permission with others like, we're judged not by outward appearance but by the looks of the heart and then sometimes sin is still our master and the lines seem fuzzy and enigmatic. And just when you've seen the scale and are shaking your head, guilty that we're here for the thousandth time or the first, you recognize the lightness. Not because you've remembered what to tell yourself, but because when you just can't, it drives its feet to the earth and takes you to tomorrow. Let it! Grace is sufficient, enough to transform the pressure of knowing true words into feeling the freedom of them carry you from this home to that one. It's shared amongst a battered people, and it's here helping us make the best of it.

"And then He told me, My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9 (MSG)