In high school, my two best friends came at a time when I had been broken and beaten down, and had newly moved to a new state and found a fresh start.  But I was in a strange school, a strange church, and I had strange new things to learn about what love, and truth, and “safe,” meant.  These two swept in and captured my young girl’s heart, bringing laughter and prayer and encouragement, not to mention a tripled wardrobe, and Friday night dates for shared fettuccine, with salad and breadsticks.  We attended each other’s youth groups, started a Bible study in our school, and sang together – barefoot – but that’s another story.  We drove to the beach, sunroof open and our favorite a cappella music blaring, and we ate ice cream and we cried when our hearts were broken.

Sometimes, though, because our lives were so interwoven, the hurts we knew were caused by each other.  Sometimes, in our effort to be all that our young hearts and minds already sensed we were called to, we would miss the mark of the heart of it all.  We agonized over right and wrong and we held each other to a higher standard than the rest of the world (I am good at pushing, even when I can never live up to those standards), and many times, I remember my sweet mama saying, “Honey, you need to learn to accept, and to give, grace.”

Flash forward, and I’m a mama with a girl (and four boys) of my own.  I have high standards.  I know that the stakes are life and death, and I don’t want to waste a moment.  I’m sharpening arrows (well, I’m presenting them to their maker to be sharpened), and I have high hopes those arrows will fly straight and find the hearts of those who so desperately need love.  As our world grows darker, I have a growing sense of urgency for those who have answers to step up and be light.  It’s easy, though, for me to trample headlong right over hearts and forget again the grace.

I don’t want to ever miss the mark.  I was created to offer truth in love.  To embrace the never-ending, never-wavering pursuit of my Papa, and to offer it right back out to those around me.  It’s not cheap grace we receive or give; it cost the Creator everything.  It requires of those who yield to it, everything.  But that everything is not an effort to grasp that love, nor a tool to win or earn it.  That everything is a response that can be the only fitting one, to ultimate grace.  Grace says, “you are enough, because I made you enough.”  Grace says, “run after me, because I am all.”  Grace says, “yes, die to self, but gain LIFE.”  I want to say hard things, but say them for the good of another.

Those heart-friends and I shared a favorite song all those years ago, and its refrain still plays in my head:

To Love God, love people
That’s the center of the mark

In this life some things
Are bound to change
But one thing remains the same
We all need love

Time goes on, it moves like a hurricane
And through all the wind and rain
We all need love

As this world just keeps on turnin’
round and round
There are treasures to be found
If we just let compassion lead the way
Draw back your bow, let love go
Shoot straight for the heart
With all of your might, set your sight
Take aim from the start
To love God, love people
That’s the center of the mark

Every day, through what is and is to come
When all has been said and done
We all need love

So Jesus came, a gift from the heart of God
He gave us His life because We all need love

And the love that death could not
keep in the grave
Is alive in us today
So we must live to show the world the way

For the world is the target
And the arrow is the cross
As we set out on this journey
Lets obey the call from the heart of God
Let us Love at any cost