Clarifying Character Pt. 1

I laughed out loud, because I so easily saw myself in him.  Brennan Manning, in The Ragamuffin Gospel, reassured me, reminded me not to panic over my foibles:

Distracted by a disturbing phone call, I left home to give a lecture to the inmates of Trenton State Penitentiary and began with the outrageous greeting, "Well, it's nice to see so many of you here."...And so it goes. p.83

We all mess up.  But what do You do with that, God?

Today, I do not look back at the old journal.  For just this one entry, I stay with the Now.  But it is as preface to a mountaintop post from the old journal; one I'll post next.  Twice in the last decade, God has given me a startling shake to the end that His character was clarified for me.  Tomorrow, I'll share the earlier one that related to a call to suffering; today I look at what I've forgotten about Your grace.

The epiphany came shortly after that request I made a few days ago--when I tried to ask so eloquently, so poetically for God to teach me about His wrath. 
"I can handle it!" I breathed, as I wafted incense toward my nose and hugged my prayer shawl close.  And He said, "Teaching you about my wrath would be like putting a loaded gun in the hand of a 3-year-old!" My mystical moment, my shoulder brush with the Gnostic--all ground to a quick halt.

"Oh, ok..."  Soberly, I reached for the Manning book.  It wasn't long before I began to see what Almighty God meant.  Manning speaks of the grace-hugging Christian, the one who:

utterly rejecting the God who catches people by surprise in a moment of weakness--the God incapable of smiling at our awkward mistakes, the God who does not accept a seat at our human festivities, the God who says "You will pay for that," the God incapable of understanding that children will always get dirty and be forgetful, the God always snooping after sinners. p.38-9

And I realize I have drifted into "seeing" that God as The One and Only, the One I'm supposed to love with all my heart and soul and mind.  No wonder I'm conflicted!  Good grief, I'M a better dispenser of grace than the God I've been trying to accept as the Reality. 
Repent. Repent. Repent. 
And then I read this:

Imagine a little boy trying to help his father with some household work, or making his mother a gift.  The help may be nothing more than getting in the way, and the gift may be totally useless, but the love behind it is simple and pure, and the loving response it evokes is virtually uncontrollable.  I am sure it is this way between our Abba and us.

I hate to admit it, but I think in actual practice, my perceived One and Only would look down on my own paltry attempts at gifting toward Him and say something like, "You didn't cut that edge quite straight there, did you?  And does that grass really look realistic, that shade of green?"

The thing is, times past I knew You to be a God like Manning describes.  Good grief, I literally used the same example when it showed up in my own everyday life: 
http://sdmen.blogspot.com/2006/03/and-gift-goes-on.html

How did I forget You? How did I lose You?
What Pied Piper took me wandering down a road where human love is able to outshine divine?
Thank You for helping me remember.