Introduction

 My name is Grace.  I'm a follower of Christ, a wife, and a mother of three beautiful, spirited children.  I'm passionate about eating local, feeding the hungry, breastfeeding and birth(I'm working on my doula certification), building and living in community and following Christ.  But writing it out like that sounds so...fake.  Because really I'm just a girl, not even thirty, who is pretty broken and tries to find Chist in the middle of that.  That's where this blog comes in.  I have another blog, started in the middle of a very hard year.  While sweeping my floor, I was challenged to look for God's goodness in midst of my crazy full life.  On that blog, I try to write every day as a way to keep myself focussed on the good.  My mom reads it and she calls when I haven't posted to ask why.  Nothing like moms to keep one accountable, even online. :)

 This blog comes out of something different.  For most of my life, even as a Christian, I struggled with addiction, depression and suicidal thoughts.  The church I grew up in was very legalistic and I began to believe that I wasn't good enough for God.  I read my Bible and prayed, but still remained broken.  Those areas of brokenness were buried pretty deep beneath the surface.  Most of the people in my life labelled me a good little Christian girl, but I knew better.  Eventually I walked away from the Church for about a year and a half.  And in that walking away,  God did something amazing.  Through a crisis pregnancy, He stripped away all of my self-deception and began a journey of healing that is nothing short of miraculous.  Thankfully, He's still not done.

 After my daughter was born, I joined a church plant that held values of transparency, vulnerability, and restoration.  Coming out of such intense self-deception, this was life-giving for me.  Finally a church that accepted and loved broken people!  But we are all broken, and it's hard to love others where they are when we walk away from the Source to do it on our own.  Last year that resulted in my mentor speaking hurtful words to me and social ostracism from the church.  I wanted to revert to my nice comfortable masks, but I knew that way leads to spiritual death.  Still,  it just hurt too much!

 Then my friend wrote a beautiful post about being real.  She got me thinking and I responded to her Facebook post which then ended up in her post.   Then I wrote about it on my happy blog.   Thus both the title and the concept behind this blog.  This is where I hope to be honest about my struggles as I try to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.   This will also be where I write my thoughts on the Radical Read-along.   Anyhoo, be welcomed to my bare-souled journey and please feel free to walk along with me.  Much love, gracie:)