Violent Grace
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart." C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Here's what no one tells you when you decide to walk out this Jesus thing in a way that alters your life. Sometimes grace is violent. Sometimes, (some would argue, all the time) the only way to save something, is to kill it. To rip it wide open, leaving the gaping wound exposed so it can truly heal. So you can then, become who you were meant to be.
I had been sitting with this idea for much too long, and then was hesitant to share as this month was one for the books where violence is concerned. I wanted to be sensitive, my first venture back after a long hiatus. But I feel as though I wasn't giving readers enough credit. You know the difference of which I'm speaking. You know because each of you, I'm sure, in one way or another, have experienced this violent kind of grace whether you knew it at the time or not.
Sometimes, there is just no other way to get to the new skin underneath without ripping the old one off, with all of the blood and tissue and pain it involves. It's seldom a gradual process- rather, we seldom recognize it as such. This violent grace tears up and through lives like a tornado, bringing to the light all that was hidden, all that was covered, all that was, broken. It's the grace of God that He comes like the mighty ocean. So we could see His greatness, feel our smallness, and know our significance in that He thinks we are worthy to come rescue. But. It certainly doesn't always feel that way.
This has been my year of violent grace. Of a tearing down and a rebuilding. Of a breaking down and trusting that He could make me new. I have never been so lost or more found. I am still being torn wide open, scales and blood everywhere. I'm much more like Eustace than I'd ever care to admit. It's taken a lot of myself to submit to such a violent grace as this feeling as though every tear, "had gone right into my heart". Which is where it needed it most.