Grace is a handout

I think I might be slightly independent

ok wait

What I meant to say is that I might have a itty bitty problem with accepting help

um...right...

Potentially, the implications I may or may not be discussing are like, if there was a train coming at me and I was, say, chained to the train tracks, and there was, maybe, a guy standing beside me holding the key to get me the heck outta there, I'd do my best to brute force my way out of those chains before that train came and if I couldn't, I'd do my best to kind've lean out of the way so maybe the train would just, you know, break my leg. I can get that fixed later, right?

 Um, no thanks key guy, I obviously don't need you, I've got this. 

In addition to having a....we'll call it selectively tenacious attitude...I also grew up an American from a background of German immigrants/Cherokee Indians/a founding father of the freaking United States, which means the phrase "you want it you work for it" is my bread and butter. Failure isn't an option, but working your ass off is. Be self made. Earn your keep. Insert all those other phrases that echo the mentality Hemingway so succinctly embodied in "Invictus": I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.  

My mom sent me an article recently (among other great things, like my January edition of Scientific American and a whole box of fudge and dark chocolate covered coffee beans). It was just a crumpled up page she had photocopied form somewhere, with pen-drawn arrows pointing all around to a title at the top of the page.

 "Let go of your independent attitude" the title yelled at me, with the verse Hebrews 4:16 emblazoned underneath it.

"Cuuuuuute" I thought. My mom is now the pot calling the kettle (that's me!) black. Sweet. Nothing like hearing you're too stubborn from the woman who refused to tell the dental student performing her root canal that he didn't numb her correctlyl because she thought his superior would get mad at him if he found out. She sat through that whole root canal too. No painkiller or nothin'. What a pot. 

I read on, and the article was a short devo discussing how strong work ethic can skew our thinking when it comes to receiving what God freely gives us (I read that phrase and was like "phhhfft" no, God loves my work ethic. Haha). A particular phrase stuck out to me, it said "Jesus came to deliver us from struggling, not invite us into a new way of struggling under the banner of Christianity". 

And I thought that this morning, about how I rarely pray for grace-I pray for competence. And I felt God stir my heart and gently say, "You know, grace is a handout". 

Um, excuse me, I have a hard time accepting help when I need it--I certainly don't do well with the whole handout thing. Psh. No. Handouts. Those are for lazy people right? People who don't want to work, people who aren't good enough, who aren't strong enough, to make it on their own. Handouts are for the weak. Handouts are for needy people. Handouts are for the inadequate. 

But you know, for all our glorification of competence, it certainly hasn't done too much for us. And it definitely hasn't accomplished anything close to what grace already has. And I'm beginning to think God wants to show me a different side of walking with Him. That one I really don't want to know about because I think it has to deal with handouts, and I don't need no handouts (crossed arms, cocked hip, straight up gangster style). 

But apparently I do. Because I need grace. And grace....mmmm. Yeah. Grace is a handout.