Cool breeze, open heart, held hand.

I don't know why, exactly, nothing went according to plan this weekend, why it feels like nary a dent was made in my mountain of work, why my budget's still unfinished and my future still unsure, why I feel cagey and restless and yet -- somehow and simultaneously -- content. It probably didn't help that it took me an hour and a half to get from Brookline to Cambridge today after apple-picking with Tara, Bekah, Kate B. and company. Hitting street festival after festival, crowds of children and senior citizens picking their ways gingerly over Boston's uneven streets interrupted one set of plans after another. I thought briefly about skipping church and finding some place closer to my house to pop into. But I figured that so many obstacles probably signified that something great was going to be said; things worth getting to, it seems, always take a little bit of extra effort.

I heard what I needed to hear: that the message of Ultimate Grace has two distinct components, both the individual's coming to realize and know her own human condition and then coming to understand the vast graciousness of God in the context of that condition. In other words, I am not "good enough" for the kingdom; upon my acknowledging that, however, God is good enough to let me into it anyway.

I can see how those reading from outside the perspective of faith would find this idea of the human condition a limiting or even damaging world view. But even as I stand on the brink of Something Next and feel wholly unprepared for it, I realize the vitality and strength I draw from this perspective. I feel inadequate for what lies ahead because I, in my own strength, am inadequate. And this is known, not just by me, but by one whose love for me brings me into places and in touch with people greater, bigger, better than I. Why?

Recent experience has taught me that freedom exists, not in covering the past, but in revealing it to the beloved; that the greater value lies in knowing I am loved after full exposure rather than in a carefully executed montage of experiences made to paint me in my best light. Nothing makes one humble like a fully-suited and well-heeled tumble down a storm drain (literally and metaphorically speaking, this may have -- okay, totally did -- happen to me this past week. Again.). If this is true on a human scale, how much more so is it true with the divine?

So here it is, a weekend's restlessness resolved by the following: I am undone and wholly human, and I am loved for that. I, operating in my own strength, will never be enough. I am not asked to be enough. I am merely asked to be humble and honest enough to admit that the world scares me many times over and that, in an attempt to salve the wounds left by other people's demons, I often summon up my own. It's a good gift, knowing I will scrape my knees time and time again and that both his hand and his expectant laughter will be there at the ready.