The last few weeks have brought about a fresh batch of human struggles for Clare and I to grapple with together. We did some couples emotional work with our chiropractor before school started. It seems that at times we function emotionally like married people would. This is not surprising, as many of our feelings are similar and the ways in which we grapple with our truths are ingrained in what often looks to be the very same soul. So it has been since the tiny days. I have come to see this as both a gift and a curse. I get to fight the good fight with her by my side. I get to journey this road with a living angel to point out the not-so-obvious places where we must stop and work. However, because she is in it with me as an accomplice, there is often no denying and no complacency possible. She turns the volume way up on the sound of the struggle so that it cannot be ignored. I love/hate her for that. She is not so long human that she has become savvy with the burial of many things unpleasant. She sees it, she feels it, she yells it.  Game on.

This particular work that we're doing right now delves into a deep place of trust. As she has walked into a new classroom with a new teacher and all new friends (her 4 best ones are right next door...together), she is needing to explore her source (in this situation, her source is her keeper, her teacher). She is being asked to stand on her own in this great place of new with only a few things old to rely on (like familiar geography and her same TAG teacher from Kinder). She is flailing and needs to know where the boundaries are, who to trust and how to get what she needs. In writing back and forth with her teacher (A LOT), I have discovered many things about both of us. Yesterday I wrote to her this:
"...she will often push the limits of her emotions and watch for your reaction. She wants to know how you are going to respond to each of them so she knows what to expect if she gets into deep water, emotionally speaking. She wants to know that she is safe, that she can trust you if the stuff hits the fan (she can be emotionally stormy and she knows it).
...her driving desire is acceptance. She needs to know that it's OK to cry, that a 2 on her report card is just grand, that when we are mad at her we will get over it. She needs to know that disappoinment is fleeting and that she HAS TO make mistakes in order to learn."

It occurs to me that I am struggling right now in the very same way. My source and my keeper is God and he is (relatively speaking) new to me. I am just now starting to figure out how he and I can work together to keep me emotionally safe. I am on a journey to let go of my own human guidance and allow him to guide me through my spirit, using my intuition, my deepest desires and gifts. I, too am working hard to find my way...and I am often terrified, in need of a blanket, wishing for more familiar people and things. I can feel myself pushing at the boundaries of where I am in order to find out if I can trust my Keeper. I, too, doubt my source. I, too, need to know what he will do when I cry, when I screw up, when I get a 2 on my report card. I, too, need to know that it is ok to disappoint him.

Today I sat down to my TAES homework.
Here's what screamed to me:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God"
Eph 2:6-10

What I realize as this settles into my heart is that I didn't do it. No amount of work or effort or perfection or love on my part saved me. Nothing I did determined whether or not God will love me. I didn't do it. And I can't UNDO it, either. No amount of bitterness or angst, struggle or sin can change it.
It is God's gift.
I can stop testing the boundary and just rest in that.
It's immense and it's enough.