Purposely Unintentional

I am stumbling upon some savory truths during this season of my life, some of which I am humbly delighted to share.  As a believer in Christ, the Anointed One, the spiritual center and stabilizer of my life, I am relaxing into what it means to truly believe in God's opinion of me.  After just turning 40, yes forty years of age I am settling into my "self". My spirit is settling down and taking things easy for once.  I am ceasing the need to prove anything to anyone, primarily myself. Spiritual maturity means acceptance for me.  There are different types of acceptance, quiet acceptance, logical acceptance, peaceful acceptance or perhaps irrational acceptance where logic, rationality or facts are completely irrelevant. I am knocking at the door of irrational acceptance and I love it!! I accept myself totally, as is, no longer as a work in progress, but simply as is and that is not such a bad thing.  Against all facts pointing to my failures, flaws and faults I look at the woman I am today and I am digging her.  I have truly tripped or stumbled upon this level of thought.  As a self proclaimed Christian, I always believed that if I did all of the correct things or lived as closely to how Christ lived that I would attain some sort of enlightened state of being and living as evidenced by receiving all of my heart's desires.  Obviously this did not happen for me.  Being the good Christian girl, not perfect, but the good girl did not guarantee me my heart's desires.  I struggled with that for several years and then by default chose to live outside of my faith's teachings, grumbling the entire way.  Funny, I purposely lived for God while secretly hoping He would reward me in my timing with a husband, children and a career built upon my love of people and natural talents.  Spiritually I lived a life of bartering with God, in a "You give me this and I will give you my life"  trading system. You could not have told me that I wasn't doing this, but now looking back I was such a mess.  I confessed "no good thing will He withhold from those who walk upright before Him" but mentally placed time constraints on God's withholding.To think I actually chose that path purposely is still perplexing. Actually, it was the dogma of the day during that times.  Ministers taught entire sermons founded on the concept of "if you have the heart and you do the work, God will bless you" see Isaiah 1:19 and poor love stricken, hopeless romantics such as myself bought into the idea of the Christian life evolving like a romance novel.  Yes, a romance novel.  I saw myself as a young single mother as a selfless, dedicated, woman of God sacrificing her youth on the altar of faith, working diligently for Christ and surely by age thirty I would be rewarded with my Christian prince.  I laugh to myself at the silliness of it all.  Although I never uttered this train of thought aloud to anyone, I lived this way purposely and with hope that my dreams would all come true in due season, preferably again by age thirty or so.  It took, as the old folks would say, for me to keep living and then suddenly, yes unintentionally the blinders were removed from my eyes. Without well thought out reason and yes with more time on my hands I began to see faith in more clearer terms.  I could not have come up with this liberating frame of mind on my own. God has truly been dealing with me.  Life with Him is definitely the hallmark of grace.  Life, with all of its bells and whistles, ups and downs, sunshine and rain is all a gift from God, an undeserved gift.  Nothing that I can do can gain me the total life of my deepest dreams nor is there anything that I can do that could change God's mind about my deserving such a life. This little jewel of thought has radically changed how I view myself, my life and of course my God.  It all happend on purpose and unintentional.