God Always Tips the Scale to Love – Guest Post by Jen Ferguson

Drawing a line in the sand wasn’t working.

And when she expected more harsh words or another “pat” on the rear, I instead scooped her up and held her, this six-year old body, in the same way you might cradle a newborn. And I started to sing her favorite song while I carried her into my bedroom to sit in the rocking chair that was once my grandmother and my great-grandmother’s before that.

We rocked back and forth, her huddled against my chest, wrapped tight in a hand-made blanket that had come from my grandmother’s house. We listened to the low creaking and we inhaled the scent of the loved ones since passed on, wrapped up tight in the love that has covered us many time over.

As I ran my hands, pressing flesh into the oak grains, as I curled my fingers around the chair’s arm, I imagined my grandmother’s hand upon mine. A simple reminder those times I had drawn the line and my grandmother chose love instead of exerting power. My grandmother, the one with the direct line to my heart, taught me the pull of unconditional love. She taught me to see to the heart and not worry so much about demanding those things that just need time to grow.

Rocking my daughters, scooping them up and covering them with a blanket, responding to them with unexpected tenderness – this is what God does with me most of the time. The thing is because I am always braced for the heavy hand, the punishment, the look of disappointment on His face, I don’t allow myself to see, much less receive, the gentleness that He extends to me.

Recently, I’ve set out on a journey to rid my life of scales, the tit-for-tat way that I have lived my life thus far (you can read more about that here). As such, I am hypersensitive to my thought processes these days and I realize how hard I must fight to live a life free of the continual weighing that goes on in my mind. I realized last night as I closed my eyes to pray that these thoughts were rolling through my mind:

All of these sentences boil down to one thing – Since I have not…He will not.

And yet, He does. But, I have to choose to believe that He understands my shortcomings and still loves me anyway.

I have to choose to believe that when I am screaming (on the inside) at the top of my lungs, He doesn’t long to match my voice in all its rage or sadness.

I have to choose to believe that He instead wants to cover me in a blanket and rock me, until my heart can be calm again.

But there is a choice here:  I can continually weigh myself until I feel some semblance of “just” or “righteous enough” and then approach the throne.

Or, I can choose to accept that a contrite heart, He has yet to deny. I can choose to see the gentleness and turn from the wrath of my own self-inflicted hand. I can choose to see that His grace, His sacrifice will always tip the scales to love, acceptance, and freedom.