Get a Grip!

I've never really been a big fan of having fingernail polish on my hands. In my opinion, it's kind of like slapping some lipstick on a pig. My hands are big and ogre-like. I have dry patches on my fingers from too much dishwater, calluses on my palms from years of manual labor, I chew my cuticles and my fingers are crooked. I have always been self conscious about my hands to a point of shame. I try to hide them in photographs and I pull my sleeves down over them... (when I can find sleeves long enough to cover my gorilla arms. But we'll cover that issue in another entry). When I clap along with my preschoolers, I always have at least one bright-eyed, honest to a fault, tiny human turn around and comment on the fact that my clap sounds like thunder in the mountains. Seriously folks, you can't make this stuff up.

All of these horrific descriptions truly paint a bleak picture for my future in hand modeling, don't they? However, these descriptions are what is seen through the stained, smudged, chronically over critical lenses of my own horribly inaccurate eyes. Our warped ideas can truly set us on a path to self condemnation. It goes much deeper than hands. We look, we see and we condemn ourselves. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Now, I'm going to get all biblical. I'm about to drop a loving truth bomb on you.

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death." Romans 8:1

When we live for something bigger than our world, our lenses focus and soften at the same time. We have the ability to see clearer, yet, by grace, we have the ability to love what we see. It is our world that fills our heads with the lies of insurmountable expectations. Always falling short. You get a lot of skinned knees and broken noses living life like that. I, for one, am not a fan of kissing the concrete. But, here's the kicker... did you know there is another way to live? We can choose to see ourselves and others through the eyes of a God who loves! His grace abounds and it beckons us to live a life for Him!

Now, let's take a look at these big ol' meat hooks of mine through the eyes of our awesome Creator. I see a little girl who could gather up enough jax to make her high-man at Horace Mann Elementary for 3 weeks straight. I see hands of proficiency that could maneuver a drafting pencil to create  blueprints and elevations. I see a hand with a beautiful ring on it, a symbol of my life long commitment to the man I love. I see hands that held my babies, played ball with my little boys, braided my little girls hair and turned pages on countless storybooks during snuggle time. I serve. I comfort. I love and I work. All with those big, awkward hands that moments ago seemed so horrible.

So often we aren't looking at ourselves through the proper lenses. We see flaws, He sees beauty. We see inadequacy, He sees sufficiency. By the grace we are given, we can see the masterpiece we are. Let's live like we are beautiful contributions to our world! Let's see others for being beautiful contributions to our world! Let us live in these truths and remember the sacrifice that was made to enable us to see ourselves and others through the proper "prescription". End of Chapel Talk.