The Exquisite Perfection of Grace: How to Attain Acceptance When We Face Imperfections

I stumbled on something lovely as I spent hours shredding old files. This is worth sharing

The following is a piece of paper I nearly sent through my overheated shredder this afternoon as I sat pushing ancient and unused paperwork into oblivion. It deserves to be shared, for as I age, I do my level best to reach this point. The quote is from Lewis B. Smedes.  

You all know me to be pretty open in my beliefs; Mr. Smedes was a Christian, and in this, he doesn't fall into the unfortunate modern American version of same.

To that, I am deeply grateful to have discovered this as I bade goodbye to very large parts of my life, decade by decade, and watched the feelings come and go. I hope you find the same beauty in this as I did:

                                GRACE

We are ready for grace when we are bone tired of our struggle to be worthy and acceptable. After we have tried too long to earn the approval of everyone important to us, we are ready for grace. When we are tired of trying to be the person somebody sometime convinced us we had to be, we are ready for grace. When we have given up all hope of ever being an acceptable human being, we may hear in our hearts the ultimate reassurance: we are accepted, accepted by grace.

We are accepted in our most fantastic contradictions and our most boring corruptions. Accepted with our roaring voices and our purring virtues. We are damaged masterpieces, stunted saints; there are ogres and angles in our basements that we can hardly tell apart and that we have not dared face up to. For the whole shadowed self each one of us is, grace has one laving phrase:

you are accepted. Accepted. Accepted.

With great and abiding respect for Dear Reader who offers me the grace of your eyeballs, your comments, and your valued input, as well as those who also offer me financial support, I offer this up to you wherever you are in your life, today, whatever your mirror told you this morning.

Dedicated with deep respect to my long time dear friend and beloved coach Orvel Ray Wilson, whose friendship these many decades has been a defining factor in my life. Thank you for giving me two hours out of your Saturday morning to challenge my world and grace my life. There is no better life coach. If you are in the market for one, look him up.

                                                                     ***

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