I am a work in progress.

I've never felt like I have it all together. I've gone months where I am caught in an endless cycle of waking up in a heaping mess of chaos and trying to make sense of it all before the daylight fades. One minute, I'll be congratulating myself for getting all of my tasks completed on my to-do list, and the next I'll be on the verge of ripping my hair out due to the annoyances of life. Sometimes I just want to give up because I feel as if I am at rock bottom.

I'm human, and I've been broken. I've been ashamed. I've been the outcast. I've been the person sitting alone at the lunch table. I've been the one who contemplated their purpose in life and if they even had a purpose at all. Many times I've felt unworthy, like I just didn't belong. Other times, I've been in this fighting battle for perfection. I beat myself up for each individual flaw in my life, and am constantly trying to improve. Even after becoming a Christian, I still have felt unrighteous at times, like I wasn't doing everything I should have been doing to please God. That is, until my perception of grace changed.

What exactly is grace? There are so many different definitions that come up if you do a simple Google search. My favorite definition that I've heard over the years would be: unmerited favor. In order for grace to be grace, it must not be deserved. If we deserved the amazing grace that God gave us, it wouldn't be so amazing, would it?

An important word from Jesus himself comes from a time where the Pharisees were questioning His actions. The Pharisees were Jews who strictly followed the traditional law, and were very self-righteous. Once, Jesus was having dinner with many people the Pharisees deemed "unrighteous" or "outcasts." They were tax collectors. When the Pharisees addressed this, here is what happened:

Luke 5:30-32 (ESV)

³⁰ And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”³¹ And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.³² I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

This has been such an essential lesson to my walk with Christ. God didn't send His son as a perfect sacrifice—to die on the cross and rise again, for people who didn't need it. The truth is, we are all unrighteous, and that is why Jesus came. We do not deserve the amazing grace bestowed onto us by a perfect and Holy God, but He has given it to us regardless.

That is why, despite all of my flaws and mistakes, I don't need to beat myself up. I don't need to have regret for the past, because Jesus has covered it all through my belief in Him and the power of that grace. I'm still a broken person, but the amazing thing about God is that He has the power to turn the broken into beautiful. When He looks at me, He doesn't see me as I see myself; He sees me as His beautiful child, whom He loves dearly.

No matter where you are in life, there is nothing that my God cannot forgive and accept. Although you may be an outcast to people, as the tax collectors were, you will not be shunned by Jesus. He will turn your brokenness into beauty.