I’ve been following Christ for a while now. I think about 6 years for real, as before that I think a lot of what I believed about God was impersonal and just a distant idea of what I thought He was. But even with trying to follow Christ and be in a right relationship with Him, I somehow ended up believing some messed up, unbiblical truths about what it means for me to actually know Christ and serve Him.

Senior year was an emotional rollercoaster, to say the least. It was easily the hardest year of high school for me, mostly because I had vowed to myself to just push through and not slow down and that’s what I did. I enjoyed all of the attention that comes with being the oldest and a generally well-known, well-liked person in the high school, but I ended up putting a lot of weight on the things that A- do not matter and B- I couldn’t physically maintain. Because of this, I had experienced a lot of heartache and pain, and I remember vividly coming home the last week of high school and going straight into my room and just sobbing on my bedroom floor.

By the end of the year, I had a lot of pent-up anger and exhaustion, a number of bouts of depression and sadness, and overall a pretty unhealthy handle on my life and what I was doing with it. In my mind, I was failing in a lot of areas I should’ve been excelling in and it led me to a pretty dark place mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I was actively rejecting anything that seemed like it would tell me I was anything more than worthless, and because that’s who we are because of Jesus, I was actively rejecting God’s grace for me in the process.

Nonetheless, I found myself back that summer at the Christian camp I had been working at for the last few years and after a lot of tears and talking through the things I was feeling with my staff counselor, I realized I was processing through this big question: How does God creating me and looking at me like I’m a treasure coexist with all my failure?

The answer, which I had read for years in church, at camp, and in youth group and STILL had forgotten was so clearly and evidently stated for me was in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, where God says that His grace is sufficient for me, that His power is made perfect in my weakness. It took me still a number of weeks to get that truth ingrained in my head and heart again and realize that my idea of God, which was that His goodness was too perfect for it to even get near the ways I was falling short, was so wrong. Quite frankly, I had convinced myself that the Gospel only applied to sin, not to failure. That God’s grace didn’t extend to things that weren’t already perfect like Him.

Having experienced this and re-thinking about it recently, I’ve been realizing how much our brains do a really great job at having compassion on us, because they allow us to forget some of the deep pains we’ve had so we can once again walk in the light. But the thing is, I don’t want to forget the way that I felt only a few months ago. If I forget, I know I’ll be way more susceptible for Satan to attack me in the same way over and over again. I want to keep a memory of that pain so I can be ready, and not forget the way God saved me from myself then, and He’s saving me now. I don’t have to keep striving and letting everything rest on my shoulders, because Jesus told me He’d carry it for me. If it weren’t for His grace, I would have so much unrest and obscurity that I’d honestly probably never leave my house. Thank you, God, for your unconditional love and your unending redemption that you gave through your son Jesus on the cross! Hallelujah.