30 More Days of Grace

Middle School Angst I met her in 7th grade. Her name was Angie. And she hated me. And that is a problem when your class is a whopping 100 kids, and you only have one honors class for each subject. Thank God she wasn’t musical at all, or we probably would have had every single class together in junior high and maybe even high school. She didn’t go out of her way to be mean to me; she just made it blatantly obvious that she hated me whenever she got the chance. You know, run of the mill 90s girl drama before social media (thank you, Jesus, for that small blessing). I survived middle school with Angie, and we moved on to high school. We had many of the same friends, but I took more of the sporty, involved route, and she took more of the rebel, party route. We still had tons of classes together, and she still expressed her hatred of me whenever she had the chance, still with no explanation. Finally, during my junior year, we were in a club together, and we were elected Pre...

Monday Morning Confessional: I have a confession: Sometimes I go to random churches by myself to worship anonymously. Hear me out here: I love my church (and, no, I don’t have that tshirt). My church is amazing. I’m not sure where else you could go and find such a grace-filled group of broken misfits who are allowing God to work through them in absolutely incredible ways. But sometimes, sometimes I just need to be in a place where I can worship alone and anonymously, where no one knows me, where no one is looking at me, and where I can just blend in. If you’ve ever worked or served front and center in a church, I think you know what I mean. Grandma’s Wisdom: I was fortunate enough to grow up right up the road from my grandparents. During the summer, my brother and I would ride our bikes down the road and sit on their porch with them, drinking coke out of glass bottles (no, I’m not throwing him under the bus today. You’re welcome, Jeremy). We spent our holidays there, mornings ...

Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Other Lies we tell Kids: I ’m not sure if I ever believed in Santa. Growing up, my family members were professional sarcasm slingers and outstanding kings of creativity.  Consequently, it took immense amounts of discernment to actually know when the truth was being told. I spent years with my brother telling me I was adopted and from a different planet.  I think it might have been his sole purpose in life to destroy every one of my childhood paradigms! So, you can imagine what he did with Santa.   I was probably around five or six when he systematically tore apart every detail of the Santa myth for me.  I don’t know how much I actually believed in Santa at that point, but I know that I was done after that! What’s funny about this, is that he spent hours of our childhood trying to convince me of all of these random tales my parents would have killed him for, but when he had the opportunity to expand on the Santa tale, he ...

Limits There was one day of volleyball tryouts that I dreaded more than any others.  The thought of that day gave me anxiety, caused me to lose sleep, and was almost enough to make me forego playing volleyball in high school. The 2 mile run. I loathed running in middle school, high school, and, honestly, throughout the first 37 years of my life.  Running represented all of my weaknesses and limitations. I was never a skinny girl. In fact, throughout my late elementary years, I was a bit on the round side.  I hit puberty between 5th and 6th grade and shot up, but I still didn’t “thin out.” And, I don’t know if you ever really get over being the “fat kid” in elementary school.  So, when I was forced to do a timed run for volleyball tryouts, every insecurity and all of my limits dominated my thoughts. We had 20 minutes to run 2 miles.  The reality of this was that I never had a problem actually making my 2 miles in 20 minutes, but the fea...