This week's Quotable Monday comes from something a friend sent me from over at Dry Bones Dance.

"There are things about me that will never be "normal" and will never
be fixed. I will most likely always walk with an emotional limp,
although you might have to look close to see it. What's weird is that
the very off-centeredness that makes me fall over sometimes is also the
gift I offer to the world."

It reminds me of my own limp. The grace I've received from my Abba Daddy as I've tried to live up to my own ideals and failed miserably.(That's the trouble with our ideals–if we all live up to them it makes us impossible to live with!) It reminds me of commitments I've made and broken. Of promises I made to God and myself, and then denied long before the rooster crowed. It reminds me of my own emotional and spiritual baggage of sin and struggle…and of God's manifest strength in my weakness. At times in my life I've tried to fill the emptiness that comes with the absence of God's presence through a variety of substitues–writing, fishing, television, movies, shallow relationships, work, alcohol, music, exercise, etc. And somewhere along the way I lost the desire for freedom, loved my captivity, and imprisoned myself in things I hated. The good news is that none of those failures was terminal because radical grace gripped me and brought me back…with a limp. 

But this limp is victorious.  It's a limp that is the result of learning that my tilted halo is worn with an easy grace. I'm discovering that the cross accomplished far more than revealing the love of God. It points to the truth that God has done (and continues to do) what we could not do for ourselves. The limp reminds me of the haunting question of Calvary: What kind of love is this that He loved me and delivered himself up for me? The limp reminds me a conversion–a turning from mistrust to trust–who's risked everything on Jesus, knowing that I can never make myself lovable enough or presentable enough, and am not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace. This limp reminds me of a time when I had run out of options. When Christ was all I had to turn to, and Christ was enough. It reminds me of the love I found that is stronger than death. 

I will never be 'normal' again. Ever. In fact, I'm beginning to think that maybe…just maybe…the joys of heaven are an acquired taste.   I know limps are…