Today I find myself grateful for all the things God has taught me this year on grace.  He is so expanding my understanding of how much I need Him every day.  Although I understood what it meant to be saved as a very young child, and accepted Christ into my life then, I lived a long time under the deception that I had to control my own life.  I was deceived into believing that although I needed God's grace to be saved, from that point on it was all up to me.  I tried to contol myself, control my life . . . even control others around me!  Of course, it didn't work too well.  I spent most of my life in a cycle of extreme self-discipline (and exhausted!) or extreme chaos (with many feelings of failure!).  Only as God has removed each one of my dreams come true, allowed me to face failure, heartache, and my worst fears, have I come to understand a little more how desperately I need Him to make it through the next hour.  I have spent nights crying on the floor over lost loved ones.  I have wondered where the next mortgage payment was coming from, and --hello!--am I crazy to think it is truly important to stay home and raise my children.  I have spent hours at a time fighting irrational anxiety and fear in the middle of the night, feeling isolated and unable to think who to call--a good thing when I finally called out to the God who watches over me all night long.  In all my struggles--physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual--I have learned that I need Jesus.

I've also learned that if I'm not such a good housekeeper--Jesus knows I'm trying to do the best with what I have, and as long as I'm not quitting, He's not either.  If we have a day when school isn't going so well, and we decide to spend the day watching "Little House on the Prairie,"  Jesus isn't going to cause the social worker to drop by that day.  When I'm blown it again with my budget (or lack of one), Jesus isn't going to withhold provision from me until I can get it together.  Every time I go before God, He sees Jesus.  He sees Jesus keeping a perfect house, Jesus perfectly instructing my children, Jesus being perfectly wise financially.  That's grace!  Grace is remembering I'm his daughter, not His science project.

This year, I'm thanking Him that I understand grace just a little more.  And I'm asking Him to keep teaching it to me!