Exude

exude | (of a person) displays (emotion or quality) strongly and openly |

I have never described my personality as strong. As I compare who I am to others I know, I do not have a strong personality. I am quiet. reserved. not vocal. unassertive. at times very indecisive. 

However, I sat and talked with my auntie this last weekend. She used the words strong personality to describe me. My brain went, "aha!" As human we always long to be something else… I wish I was taller. skinner. shorter. curly hair… and so on. I came to realize that in fact I do have a very strong personality.

I sat there baffled and happy. A day I had dreaming of for a long time or even maybe the day I have dreaded. There is a bad stigma that comes with strong personalities. It always seems to be that the negative sides of strong personalities are what we seem to remember or think about when we use the word strong personality. These people have tended to be out-spoken. unfiltered. inappropriate. loud. I did not want to be recognized as that kind of person. But I realized that this not always true. 

I have really struggled with feeling like I sink to the background - so hearing that I have a strong personality has been encouraging because it makes me feel like I am heard. not ignored. not invisible. In fact, it makes me feel like I exude passion. personality. expression. It reminds me that even though my heart is very soft I am still heard - I am not invisible. 

Because of my brutal honesty. heart-on-my-sleeve attitude. transparency. vulnerability. I have allowed others to see my true colours. my life story. my pain. and my hurt. I want to be known for who I am. Not who I am expected to be. Not who others want me to be. I want me to be known as me… Justine. When I am comfortable this has allowed me to be open about my opinion. be set in my ways. open. honest and vulnerable. I want to leave my doors open to everyone. I am okay with risking everything - I know that I need to be cautious with this because not everyone can handle this. But I know that there are people who can.

To be honest, I may have coveted others for their strong personality. I always thought that if I had a strong personality people would want to be around me more - or people would want to be my friend. I have become comfortable with that will not always be true. In fact, my personality may push people away. I can come to realize that I will not always be liked by everyone; I will not always be everyone's cup of tea. But that is okay because there are people that have such a deep and rich love for me. They are able to handle my baggage, my past, my life experiences. They are able to take what they hear and their view of me has not changed and they still love me the same. 

These people exude the love of Christ and it fills my heart and reminds me of my humanness and the unconditional love of Christ. These people extend grace that picks me off the ground. I am working on myself and trying to accept who I am, who I have grown to become. I am slowly accepting and becoming the woman that God intended me to be. I have accepted it is okay to have struggles, hurt and pain… as long as I am working on myself and always working toward the end goal of becoming more like Christ one day. 

Grace Upon Grace

enigmatic | difficult to interpret or understand; mysterious | 

In school, math was never my strong suit. No matter the explanations. steps. techniques. I could not wrap my mind around what was being spoken to me I would not get it. The class should have been taught in French - at least I would be able to pick up a few phrases. I would sit at my teacher's desk and they would have to explain and walk through each step with me for me to understand. 

The concept of grace is something that I struggle with greatly as well. Through struggles and insecurities I have been very hard on myself. I do not let me self slip. fall. be anything less then perfect. This is a pressure I feel from others, but a greater pressure I put on myself. I do not give myself any grace. The last five years has been difficult on my family and those who know us, I have changed a lot in that time. But it only took me four years to recognize the change. It took someone saying to me, "Justine, you are strong. incredibly strong. I don't know how you do it." I recognized the change. I realized I turned to things to help me cope. When things did not change, I allowed myself to sink deeper. Recently I sat down with my parents and opened up about how I was truly feeling and at the end, my dad placed a book in my hands. All is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir. Brennan Mannings' Memoir. I really enjoyed the book. It was full of grace and helped me realize that I am human. struggle is inevitable. However, on the flip side I was discouraged with the book as well. 

Being a perfectionist, I always like things to be completed 100% and perfect. I really struggled with the fact that throughout the memoir Manning remained an alcoholic. I realized thoroughly that alcoholism is a very deep and dark struggle. It is not something that you can just snap out of. You can't just tell an alcoholic, "well just stop drinking." It does not work that way. Reading the book, I was looking for a wow! factor. I was hoping he was going to go through this life altering change - but he didn't. I really struggled in my thoughts and felt like he and I both were using grace as an excuse to continue to fall down the path we were going. We can never be perfect. We are always going to fall. be defeated. trampled. But if we walk closely with God, grace is something that we can all come to understand or start to understand. 

I have realized I have walked far from the Lord and what I had been taught growing up. I hold guilt and a heavy burden because I wandered so far off. With that being said, grace is a subject that I am fighting with. There is a battle for a my heart and mind. I know in my mind that I am free to accept the grace that has been given to me. My heart just holds a load of guilt that will not allow my heart and mind to agree and finally accept the grace I have been given.

I really have been searching. I am just waiting, waiting for that day it just clicks. I can look back in my journal and realize the grace I've been needing. Last night, I wondered through the Christian Book store with a goal in mind. Find a book. One that will encourage me. wow! me. help teach me. guide me. motivate me. I started looking through the devotions. I was not getting anywhere. I was so discouraged because I did not know where to start looking and none of the books I skimmed through were jumping out at me. Just before I lost all hope I found, One Thousand Gifts Devotional by Ann Voskamp. I read the back. first devotion. then the content page. Every devotion in it has to deal with grace. I instantly felt better. encouraged. It was exactly what I was looking for. I thought of Manning and his story of grace. I wanted to read someone else's encounter with grace. I stumbled upon Epic Grace - Chronicles of a Recovering Idiot by Kurt W. Bubna. I only recognized the Epic Grace part until I read the back. It reads, 

"Have you ever needed a second chance? We all make mistakes and learn things the hard way. We all blow it and wonder, What am I going to do now? 

Self-confessed "recovering idiot" Kurt Bubna has experience that gut wrenching "I messed up" feeling many times. He definitely has his regrets - from failing to follow directions, to nearly ending his marriage, to deliberately walking away from God.

Like many of us, he has sometimes felt inadequate and overwhelmed. But he has discovered that God still has a purpose for our lives, regardless of how often we stumble.

In this collection of heartfelt and often hilarious personal stories, Kurt invites us to learn from his journey along the path of grace. Let the trials and triumphs of a "grace magnet" help you believe that God is indeed the God of second changes and unconditional love - and his epic grace can transform even the most imperfect life into something priceless" 

I am only a chapter into it but I have already bawled my way through a few pages. He recounted a time at church when he was very young. He shared about his friend Margaret who was born with cerebral palsy. She struggled physically in most - if not all, areas of her life. He wrote,

"One day I came in late… Margaret was in her usual spot, but she had her crippled and shaking hands as high in the air as she could lift them. She had a stream of saliva flowing from her mouth (which was a normal part of her condition) and tears pouring down her face, which bore a crooked smile. Her eyes were closed, and she was singing with all her heart."

After Church, he asked her how she does it. She responded by telling him, "Everyday is another day to show my Jesus how much I love him." That stopped me in my tracks. I thought back to reading Manning's memoir and it clicked. It does not matter the struggles we are going through, as long as we are working on ourselves and showing Jesus how much we love him. That is not taking advantage of the grace God has freely given us. Of course God wants to see us work through our struggles, but his biggest concern is that we draw near to him and we are working on ourselves to be more and more like him everyday.