I ran across one of my mother's many journals today. This one was actually a small three-ring binder, black, nothing fancy. It was kept during the late nineties, when my two oldest children were tiny, and when her marriage to my father was falling apart. It broke my heart to read it and some of the pages were immediately put aside to be burned.

The pages I kept were, for posterity, a cautionary tale. I'm sure that if I were to take samples from all her writings and place them on a table, one could place them in order according to their desperation. Desperation for freedom, for hope, for release from shame. Desperation for a fix to her problems that would be quick and painless. Page after page of resolves, of ideas and strategies. And page after page of scripture.

She wrote out one verse twelve times. In twelve different translations. She claimed promises that she had no understanding of what their theological meaning was. And I realized that she labored always to experience freedom, but she never knew rest.

She expressed over and over her desire to bring hope to the hopeless, but then in her own words, she expressed confusion and shame - the opposite of hope.

Oh how I wish that I could have known the gospel the way I do now! That I could have offered her rest and peace.

How many women do I come in contact who, as my mother wrote, "are dying inside, like a machete buried deep within and twisting"?

No amount of resolve can make us right with God. No amount of obedience can bring peace. It is never enough. Our flesh only condemns us.

We are loved. Really, truly, deeply. We were chosen when we were enemies. And we are still loved when we are failures.

She knows now. Even more fully than I possibly can.