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)

I suppose there's no use in thinking about the romantic idea that halfway happened and then left and what you could have done to save it, but I was thinking yesterday that how'd I have to go and tarnish a perfectly well-intended afternoon. Those are the worst ones to ruin, aren't they? Seventy-something degrees, maybe just eighty. You started out as Summer Finn, (from 500 Days of Summer) only you're the EXPECTATIONS version who's sexy and carefree and believes in love. You aren't bothered by fear and your favorite place is a rooftop at night and almost everything on earth interests you. You tie ribbons in your hair and play "penis" in the park and ride a bicycle when you could just drive a car. You have a different dress for each day times two and you're glad that Tom's still intrigued by you.

Neither of us have to work and on Mondays the rest of the world usually does - so we drive through an empty highway, scour a city map to find the most suitable spots for our dog, go right up to the taco counter with no line, make excuses for daytime dessert and, like all kids who should have known better, there's really nothing that could soil this one.

Ryan had a thing for work at his place in Ft. Worth, so we were making a day of it like how we do sometimes to kill two birds with one stone. He'd go for about an hour or so - hour and a half - and I'd sit outside of the juice bar next door with our pup until lunch. I had forgotten my laptop and my book as we rushed out of the house this morning, but I had a phone and a charger and I guess if I didn't have those, I'd sit at a two-top and have to talk to people like the olden days and time would go slower. I tied Rascal's leash to the railing so that I could use the restroom inside. I peeped my head around the corner a last time just to make sure he was settling alright, and through the window, I watched my dog climb over the ledge - one paw after another - and onto the street where trucks come to load. I wasn't worried about him getting hit because he was still connected, but I rushed over and hoped he hadn't managed to hang himself in front of a vegan juicery. I'd just have to hold it, I thought.

I had become a loiterer on the patio furniture of this strip center with a dog that looks mangy and a water bottle that I couldn't drink right now, and I was waiting to be busted by every person that walked by. I'd get up and purchase something and maybe take a piss if my pet could just handle it for two minutes. I had to have been visibly more helpless than I felt, because an employee with a visor came out to my neon green table and asked if he needed a bowl of water. But what about me? Sure, I said, and then proceeded to explain my situation and realized that I'd never had to justify my lurking anywhere before this moment. A few minutes later and an act of God at work, I would hurry in to the multi-gender toilet while a teenage boy with shaggy hair and a tie-dye shirt stroked my dog. I viciously thanked the man for having to break from work to babysit a cute animal, paid him in exact change for the most popular green drink on their menu and gave him an extra five for solving all of my problems.

How many minutes had it been? An hour? Five? I was increasingly hungry and began counting the times that people asked his name. "It's Rascal." And I would watch as their eyes widened - "Oh, that fits him perfectly!" Six of them said it.

It wasn't my husband's fault, of course. I had signed up to do this and knew exactly what I was in for. But we don't always feel the way we planned to. In fact, how we plan to feel is often a grand illusion of our more sanctified selves that we haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting. I guess sanctification does us that way - chasing the carrot on a stick until we're at a dead sprint towards the One thing that matters but being upset and betrayed and lonely in the meantime. So we feel how we feel and an hour thirty hit, and I resented every second after that. Not because I needed to eat or had things to do but because the snake crawled up my back and told me that I may as well be buried. Instead of a dog in my lap, I imagined kids and Ryan not being there. I thought about him taking the car and heading off to somewhere better while I sat waiting until dark, holding the leash in front of the juice bar. Patrons came and left like the first few bouts of tears that day, anxious ones that would last until bedtime.

He came to find me after his class (which lasted only a quarter or half past what he had predicted) and poor thing was about to know the wrath of an abandoned girl who needed someone other than the devil to yell at. I told him that he just left us here and that I can't do this by myself. I throw in some choice words to prop myself up and then start churning the wheel over again, thinking about the reasons he would have been right in forsaking me at my stoop. I blot my glassy eyes in the prettiest bathroom I've ever seen and wonder if my tear ducts hate me for being overworked and underpaid. We share some silence and sorry's over a bowl of good guacamole and feed our dog Mexican rice under the table. He knows that today was less about him and entirely about a wounded wife who was deceived by a coward, the one that was specifically and fervently told to stay out of it.

. . .

Maybe you're single or widowed or orphaned or gay and you feel how you feel, and the Lord's working in you a promise that seems a lot like neglect. I'm married now and my head's bobbing faster amongst a jumping crowd to be picked. He committed his life to me, and I instantly became a walking liability, ashamed of what I bring to the table and susceptible to hurt that may or may not ever come. The missing piece that people tell you might quench your desert heart comes around and just exposes it in full.

And with companionship, you still feel empty. A second income still isn't enough. With sex, you're still undesirable. With a home, you still find yourself longing for one. And the best life you've ever had still leaves room for the fear of it going away. And running's hard, but I can feel it taking me somewhere good, one meltdown after another. So, let me run with you, friends - we'll keep at it. Because soon our feet will stop and the stick will fall and the skin that once gave into cowardly snakes will have shed. And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.