I grew up in a conservative Christian home, with conservative Christian values, a pastor for a father, a nurse for a mother, and three amazing sisters. From the time I was a small child, I knew what was right and wrong, and the consequences thereof. I remember kneeling down one day on the sidewalk outside of our church and asking Jesus to be my Savior. I don’t remember all the details about that day, but I do remember the joy. At that moment, my life was no longer my own.

Fast forward about twelve years to a 17-year-old girl who walked around with the burdens of the world on her back. The legalistic mindset I had slowly allowed myself to drift into was destroying my relationship with the Savior I had loved so dearly. Every time I sinned, I felt as though I was pushing myself farther away from the Lord. My life was no longer about grace, but about work and sin and forgiveness again and again. It was a never-ending cycle I felt stuck in, and I didn’t know how to be set free.

One day I read the words, “God is not impressed with you,” and I was appalled. I was working so hard to be so good, to do and say all the right things, and I did not like the fact that someone had the audacity to tell me that He wasn’t impressed with me. Surely, as a pastor’s kid who stayed out of trouble, sang at church, worked in the nursery, went on missions trips, and read my Bible every day would managed to impress Him. It was at that moment I realized how foolish I had been. How could I expect this holy and blameless God to look down on the measly works I had been doing simply to appease Him be impressed with my works? It dawned on me that I had gotten it all wrong. Life was not about impressing Him; impressing God would be impossible. To think that I could impress the Creator of the mountains surrounding my university, the maker of life itself, and the Savior of the world meant that I was missing the point of my salvation altogether. I had allowed myself to fall into a deep mindset of legalism, and I was desperately failing.

I once overheard someone say they could never be a Christian because it was only a way to do something wrong, ask forgiveness, and go on living your life without dealing with guilt or consequences. It was at this moment my heart broke for the world. I had been so focused on getting everything “right,” that I had forgotten what, as a Christian, I am called to do. If we are giving the idea that Christianity is a “Get out of sin free” card, we are preaching the wrong message. As a daughter of Christ, each time I sin, the guilt and shame should be so overwhelming that I have no choice but to repent and do my best to rectify the situation. The idea is to understand that we will mess up, and when we do, it may not be okay, but we will be forgiven.

I say all this to say that, as a Christian, I am sorry that we have given the world the idea that we can do whatever we want with no guilt, and I am sorry that right now our two main representatives are either a man who cheated on his wife and molested his younger sisters or a group of people who protest everything from concerts to military funerals. I will not, however, apologize for my faith or what I believe in. My God has walked with me through the hardest parts of life, and to apologize for loving him wholeheartedly would be one of the most shameful things I could do. I wish I could say that even as I was in the mindset of legalism, I was still doing what Christ would have me to do, but I was so far from being where He wanted me. Since I was failing at doing the right thing, I allowed my relationship with Him to slowly be pushed to the back burner in my life. Now, looking back with a heart full of the grace of God, I can see that God was slowly pulling me back to Himself, and that I no longer had to worry about works, but that if I allowed myself to love Christ with my whole being, that love would spread into the farthest reaches of my life and change me from the inside out. His love ran red, my sin washed white, and my faith was no longer about me, but about Him and grace and a life of praise to Him.

“For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is my God. Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us.” Psalm 62:5-8