I’ve spent most of my life at odds with myself. Typically one apology ahead of myself (unless my temper gets the best of me – then I’m one apology behind) but always apologizing.  Sometimes explicit “I’m sorry for…” but more often, even my compulsion to apologize hidden. “I’m just like this, I’m sorry.”

I feel too deeply.
Think too deeply.
Laugh at the wrong things.
Ask the wrong questions.
Over complicate or over simplify.
Entirely too excited.
Too invested.
And cannot “let things be” to save my life.

But I’m learning to stand in that space.
To stand in my space.

Because the truth is, not only have I always, but I will always 
feel too deeply.
Think too deeply.
Laugh at the wrong things.
Ask the wrong questions.
Over complicate and over simplify.
Be too excited and overly invested.
And mess with the “well enough.”

…and that’s just fine. 

Recently, I heard a teacher who was explaining it like this:
We – in our brokenness and glory – are wrapped in the arms of Christ – in His brokenness and glory. That Christ holds us in this Krazy Glue-strength bear hug and carries us in himself into the perfect love of God saying confidently – She’s with me. 

As I am surrounded by Christ, wrapped in this unsurpassable love despite my best efforts to argue against my worth of this embrace, God sees all at once the perfection of Godself in Christ, and the brokenness of my own humanity. God sees the who I am and the who I am becoming – and loves it all.

Every aspect of my personhood is caught up in  grace like bear hugs and Krazy Glue, and in the strength of that, I’m learning to stand.  Because the Divine imprint on my life, my “calling” can either be fire shut up in my bones, or a stoked and blazing fire warming a circle around me.

I’m learning to stand not with head hung low in apology for who I am.
Nor do I stand with gloves on ready to fight.
I simply stand, embraced in grace.
Letting both the beauty and the broken show, because that’s what it looks like to be embraced in grace.

I’m learning to stand with a quiet confidence that says, “Yes, I know who I am, where I have been, and how I am broken.
BUT
I know who holds me close. I am not without – and never without – an Advocate.”

So I stand.

Still full of the questions and anxieties and uncertainties.
Still riddled with the fear of failure and the toxic drive to perfection.
Still with faded feet yet susceptible to the penetration of the very blades of grass I walk on.

But slowly, I’m learning to stand.
Because this is my space and I will not be given another one.

Image Credit: Gabriela Pinto