I caught a utterly interrupted, commercial infested version of “BeetleJuice” last night. I was delighted to see that they didn’t cut one of the best lines in the movie.
Lydia: “They wanted to scare you away so they could have their house back. And you weren’t scared. I think it hurt their feelings and scared them away.”
Delia: “Oh come on! Their dead. It’s a little late to be neurotic.”
Last night I laughed out loud. This morning, I don’t find it as funny.
Is death the only thing that can cure my neurosis?
My fear has stolen too much. I spent my teenage years with my head down because I knew everyone who looked at me would see that I was overweight, un-beautiful, and awkward. I spent my twenties trying to prove that I wasn’t overweight, un-beautiful, and awkward. In my thirties fretting that I was really hosing my life up. And so far in my forties, I’ve been freaked out about getting the rest of my life “right”.
Yeah. Neurosis is **really** funny.
- It steals your enjoyment of the messiness of life.
- It makes you self-consumed and inward focused.
- It keeps you weak and lifeless.
- It keeps you enslaved to your past.
- It distorts your view of the present.
- It steals your hope for the future.
I refuse to allow this to happen anymore in my life. I’m not really sure how to go about doing that exactly – but, I think I know where to begin:
It’s called G*R*A*C*E.
I guess I’ve always thought of grace as something you get once, for salvation, and then you were on your own to live out your salvation. Or somehow I believed you were given a supply of grace you could use throughout your life and when it was gone, you were out of luck.
But from what I read in the Bible, grace is something with live under. It’s constant. It’s not bound by time, circumstance, or merit.
Again, I don’t really understand what that means yet, but here’s what I do know:
- Grace means that it doesn’t matter if I’m overweight, un-beautiful, and awkward to myself or anyone else. It’s a mute point. The beauty of God transforms us into the likeness of Jesus.
- Grace is the hope that springs from perfect, unrelenting, unconditional love.
- Grace is something I wear like skin and not like a coat. It’s part of me regardless if I understand or believe it.
What if we spent our energies toward believing in the grace that covers us? That would require is to let go of what we fear; leaving it in a the heap of garbage we no longer want to carry with us. We can’t hold on to fear and to grace at the same time; one of them has to go.
What rubbish do you want to leave behind?
