“My grace is sufficient for thee,”

“My grace is sufficient for thee,” You say
Tomorrow and Yesterday and Today
“My goodness, like a chain
Will hold you to close me.” (tmg)

This morning, I listened to two message John Piper did on the Sovereign Grace of God (1 & 2). At the end of the first message, the announcer had a discussion with Piper and said something like “I don’t know what it is like to be near suicide, but I know many people consider it. Could you pray for them.”

As Piper prayed, I thought about my own struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide – which seems like remembering events in someone else’s life now, but they were mine and were an integral part of leading me to the Lord.

I don’t remember when it began…probably somewhere around puberty…or why, really. I could venture a guess, but hindsight makes it difficult to distinguish what came first, the depression or the weight. One would assume the weight (and all the resultant social/emotional side-effects), but I am tempted to think the depression came first and the weight was a side-effect. Again, I don’t know and at this point it doesn’t matter…what does is that for a looong time, I was a very sad, fat girl. I then turned into a very sad, fat, nearly woman being treated for chronic depression. In my senior year in high school, my parents sent me to a psychiatrist who put me on Prozac and had me talk about my dreams for an hour each week. After a couple of months of that, I took myself off the meds and tried to talk about other things with him. He wanted no part of that…so I said, “See Ya!”

I then went back to life as usual, which consisted of sitting around moping and eating, basically. These habits grew and evolved and I added other self-indulgent hobbies to my repertoire. Yet, no amount of self-indulgence did the trick…nothing snapped me out of it. In fact, I only got sadder…and bigger.

By the time college rolled around, though I’d come out of my shell quiet a bit and did less sitting and moping, I had had enough. I began planning to die. I had a plan and thought about it often. Yet, each morning I woke up thinking, “Today might be better” and went out to find out.

“My grace is sufficient for thee,” You say
Tomorrow and Yesterday and Today
“My goodness, like a chain
Will hold you to close me.” (tmg)

Basically, I came home disappointed…and thus the “plan” looked better and better.

Enter BayouMaMa (though she wasn't a mama then).

She was a tee-ninsy girl with HUGE hair from a town I’d never heard of who “just happened” to be in my English Lit. class. One day, following a discussion of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (during which I very vocally shared my anti-Christian beliefs), she pulled me aside and invited me to lunch. That lunch lasted approximately 3 hours - which, for your reference, is about average for a conversation with Kala ;). During the course of that conversation, Kala shared the gospel with me. In turn, I argued with her. Not necessarily because what she shared wasn’t appealing or made no sense, but because to concede any of her points would be to question my beliefs and I wasn’t ready to do that. She pointed me toward the Bible and gave me some info to read and we went each our own way.

We met up again in a significant way a summer later, living and working in the same dorm. Our shifts seemed to always coincide and it wasn’t very long before we started talking about God again, and that summer I surrendered my life to Christ.

“My grace is sufficient for thee,” You say
Tomorrow and Yesterday and Today
“My goodness, like a chain
Will hold you to close me.” (tmg)

After I came to know the Lord, I still struggled with depression and gluttony. To my great dismay, all of my sin issues didn’t just “poof” and go away!

As I walked, I learned about sanctification…I was a slooooow learner.

Finally, the Lord again intervened in a dramatic way and pulled me out of basically all I knew and was comfortable with, coupled that with a series of painful losses and heavy dose of solid theological teaching.

Looking back over the last…wow, 11 years (and prior to that, too)…I can see so many evidences of His hand of grace, of His keeping me close, protecting me, leading me in the way I should go.

Things haven’t all worked out the way I wanted them to, and sadly, sin is still a part of my life (though I hope less frequently), I wouldn’t change a step.

I can honestly say that to change one thing would be to change the road I have walked with the Lord, to make it less than it was, and would likely put me somewhere that is not “here” and “now” and I wouldn’t want that. Where I am is so precious. It isn’t personal perfection or my fantasy “ideal” but it is what the Lord has called “good” for me right now and I am something I never thought I’d be…well, two things I never thought I’d be:
A believer in Christ in fellowship with the One True God
and Happy!

I was driving into work the other day, thinking about things, landmarks along the road to here and just how dog gone happy I am right now (despite the struggles and trials and fears) and was just overcome. Never did I think “this” would be possible outside of marriage and family…outside of someone else coming in and saying “You are beautiful…You are wonderful…I love you…I want to love you forever…How ‘bout a kiss…and some babies.”

Someone did come in, but He didn’t say all of that. He said:

“My grace is sufficient for thee,” You say
Tomorrow and Yesterday and Today
“My goodness, like a chain
Will hold you to close me.” (tmg)