Grace for the Least Deserving

For the past decade or so, it seems that most of what I've been learning about has to do with Love and Grace.  These themes have been pretty constant - learning about God's grace and love for us, how we in turn extend this toward others, etc.  For the most part I feel like I'm beginning to get it.  I'm starting to understand Father's incredible affection for us and I'm getting better at identifying how to extend grace to others.

Lately, though, I've run into a problem.  It seems that there's a certain someone that I just can't quite extend grace toward.  I feel like they've had enough excuses, that they just need to get it together and do better.  This person is like a black hole, sucking up so much grace that they can't possibly deserve any more.

This person . . . is me.

Maybe it's because I feel that I know myself so well.  Maybe it's that my excuses ring hollow to me and that I'm privy to all my secret thoughts and motivations.  It's like knowing someone who is horrifically addicted to drugs and asks you for some money to cover their rent.  You know that money is going straight to their dealer, so maybe you pause a moment before pulling our your wallet.

Me, deserve more grace?  You must be out of your mind.

But that right there perfectly illustrates how often I still misunderstand grace.  The fact that I can't extend it to myself because I "don't deserve any more" shows that I'm not defining grace the way Father does.

The truth, though, is that I think it does take some audacity to be fully loved.  It's never been easy for me to say, "Yes, I am often selfish, I do screw up, I do have a negative impact on other people's lives . . . and I am fully, completely, unconditionally loved."

Through my faults, my failures, and my fears . . . regardless of action or attitude . . . in selfishness and sin . . . for every moment of every day of my entire existence . . . I am absolutely, mind-blowingly, incomprehensibly loved beyond my ability to imagine.  No matter what, I simply can't stop Father from loving me.  It is beyond my power to dampen his love in the slightest.  I can not forfeit it, I cannot run from it, there is nowhere to hide.

I am loved.

The question is this - dare I receive it?  Do I have the audacity to celebrate Father's unfailing love for me even in the moments when I feel that I can't love myself?  Can I learn to extend grace toward myself the way I want to extend it toward every other person who's fallen, screwed up, and
made a mistake?

Instead of trying to climb out of the pits I've dug, to clean off the mud and muck, to dress myself up real nice so that I finally feel deserving of being loved . . . do I let him love me out of these situations?  Do I let his love and grace achieve what all my stress and striving never could?

Do I dare be loved?

Yeah, I think I do.