By the Grace of God, I Am What I Am

     Each time I read the same words--the same biblical passage designated in one of three liturgical cycles--I hear different messages, I understand different nuances of the same words.  Different passages within the same set of liturgical readings speak to me with each reading.  I come to the readings a different person from my last reading.  I leave a changed--a transformed--being.
     This morning, By the Grace of God, I Am What I Am stood out--I Am not i am.
     "We are loved into existence.  From tears of joy, our goodness can flow."  Jeanne Schuler from Creighton University used these words to describe this morning's passages.  As I read her reflection, I heard, "...our goodness can flow."  
     Taking the biblical passage, along with Schuler's reflection, the immediate question that comes to me is, "Do I capitalize on what I Am?  Do I view myself as someone, who has a Gift to offer--a Need to fill?  Or, do I simply go along about my day being what i am without any appreciation of and for what I have been given.
Schuler says, "We are loved into existence."
     She is speaking of God.  Yet, we can take her reflection one step further. Who, in our lives, love us, such that we may offer what we have been given to other people?  
     It is easy to think that, as a Minnesotan, all I should give, if I am to give anything, is to give the nice--the Minnesota nice--parts of my life.  Yet, the Minnesota Nice parts of my life do not contain the treasures--the pearls--of my life that are encrusted in my life challenges.  
     The treasures--the pearls--others have given me have not come from the Minnesota Nice parts of their lives.  The treasures--the pearls--others have blessed me with have deeply rooted in their challenges--in the living of their challenges.
     I love to write.  Sometimes, I am frustrated that my clearest writing emerges from my darkest moments--my deepest challenges.
     I want to write with the same clarity that flows at those moments of despair.  Yet, that is not to be. That is not to say that I should aspire to deep challenge, and despair, in order to write with clarity.  I love to write, but, I am not a masochist.  Rather, if I Am to be loved into existence, I Am compelled to cry Tears of Joy, so that my Goodness can Flow.
     The problem?  The obstacle?  Happy does not equal Joy.  Happy is momentary.  Happy is fleeting.  Joy is enduring.  Joy is deeply rooted.
     I shudder think of what my life would have been--what it would be--if I believed that, i am what i am.
I do believe in living with a sense of purpose.  That does not mean I am better--that my purpose is better--than anyone else's is.  
     My purpose is my compelling reason to breathe deeply each day.
     I shudder to think what my life would be, if I thought that my challenges were excuses to use not to live to the fullest of my potential.
     By the Grace of God, I Am What I Am.  May each of us be loved into existence--may each of us cry Tears of Joy, so that Goodness may Flow.