Grace and Forgiveness

Well, still no sign of the mail. I had to call the people who used their credit cards to let them know. hopefully, everything is okay and the package just got sent to timbuktoo or something by accident. I'm feeling a little better about it all tonight. but honestly this has pretty much wrecked my week. Maybe i'm making it out to be a bigger thing than it should be, but to me it is a really big thing. I don't know why things never go smoothly for me. Just as I decide to step out and get involved in something this happens, which makes me just want to pack it all in. I know i probably shouldn't, but maybe it's a sign that i shouldn't be doing this. I just want to slip back into my boring, but comfortable life, because then i don't have to worry about this kind of stuff happening. I've also briefly considered changing churches or moving to another country. Of course, that was in my more non rational moments. After all things happen sometimes. i just hope people will have grace and forgiveness for me.

Actually speaking of grace and forgiveness, I was listening to family life today while doing dishes (it makes dishes and cleaning much more fun) this evening and the lady they were interviewing (don't ask me her name, i don't remember) was talking about how she experienced healing from having had an abortion in her early 20's and from bad sexual bonds she had formed with men in the past. Well, I realized how I need to work on that Grace and Mercy thing while I was listening to her story. I have a really hard time hearing about abortions. Something in my spirit just mourns the loss of the child's life. I hate to admit it, but it bothered me that she had recieved healing, yet her child could never ever have life again. I was thinking about why this bothered me and why i couldn't have grace for this at that moment and i think it was because i felt that she had to pay somehow for what she did to this child who would never have the chance to breathe in the spring air, to see and experience the beauty in the world, to laugh, to cry to learn...and i didn't feel she really did or not enough.

So much for grace hey. I guess it's okay for me to get grace, but not anyone else. And that is so, so, wrong. As I realized while listening that I was condeming her, I also realized that it's not my duty to condemn her. God is the one who judges. And God is the one who releases people from Judgement b/c of Christ. God can do what he wishes and he wishes that all recieve his grace, his forgiveness, his healing. When these thoughts ran through my head, something lifted in my spirit and I felt released from the feeling of anger i had that this woman got off scott free (or at least so it seemed in my eyes). I felt grateful that God deigns to reach down to us and touch our wounds and our hurts and frees us from the past mistakes that imprision us in darkness.