This month, in celebration of marking two things off my to do list, we are looking at the Parable of the Prodigal (Lost) Son (Luke 15:11-32).  This summer I wrote a 5 Day Devotional for the Prodigal Daughter, a free gift for you (click here to receive it) and I wrote my first book.  Yippee!!  Keep your eyes open for Prodigal Confessions: 10 Principles the Lead Us Back to the Father (release date coming soon).  I am so excited!!  I hope to add a study guide for the eBook soon, as well.

In celebration of all this wordiness, I want to feature some of my favorite bloggers, giving us their take on Prodigal Living, a life drenched in God’s lavish Grace. My friend, Life Coach Carey Bailey answered my questions on the topic this way:

• In the story of the Prodigal Son (or the Lost Son) of Luke 15, which of the characters (the younger son, the older son, or the Father do you identify with the most)? What strikes a chord with you about this particular person?

For the majority of my life I lived as the older son. I did everything with a sense of perfection to please God and others. I never saw it as pleasing them for me it was simply doing right by biblical standards and that was of value to me because Jesus was my BFF! I had a strong relationship with my parents, God, and Jesus.

As a kid, youth and young adult I read my Bible daily, journaled, was active in church youth group, and was a kind and loving person that never did anything that would get me in trouble. We all want that in our children, right? The place it began to wear me down and out was that I was in constant judgment of others that didn’t live the way I lived. Not to their face but in my mind. My husband and I joke that if I had met him any earlier than I did he would have been banned from my interest list simply because of what I would have deemed “bad choices” he made in high school and college.

It wasn’t till I was in my late 20’s till this way of being caught up with me. It took walking through the pain of what holding others and myself to crazy high standards was doing to my mind and heart for me to finally feel grace in the truest form. Through some intense counseling and self-care I finally knew how to offer grace up to others or at least I knew how to try. It doesn’t mean who I was early on in my life was fake. I look back and believe I still would have been perceived as a “good girl”. But it does mean I would have gifted myself and others a bit more room to breath around me and be themselves.

• Do you think birth order plays a role in personality? Where are you in the birth order of your family? Or have you seen it play out in your kids? How?

I do think birth order plays a role in our personality. I know way to many firstborn perfectionist and I am watching my firstborn live it out as well. I don’t encourage my 6 year old’s perfectionist tendencies, but they have been alive and well in him since he was itty bitty.

At the slightest rise of a voice or correction he folds with anguish all over his face. As he does school work or projects, it always has to be just right for him or we are doing it again. At one point we had to put him on a break from Legos because they were causing tears when he couldn’t do it perfectly. We have worked with him on saying “It doesn’t have to be perfect. We just try our hardest.” because my heart broke watching these tendencies in him develop.  I do believe they are a natural part of how he is wired and that will simply be the way it is but if I can support him in understanding that I don’t desire perfection and neither does God. But I 100% expect him to walk his own road towards being able to fully comprehend grace in the fullest extend of the word.

Will I try my hardest to share my own journey as he grows up? You bet! But some lessons will have to be learned on his own just as the Prodigal Son did.

• What kind of Father is God, in your eyes?

I most relate to God as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). There is no understanding Him,  no better descriptor for Him. He is who He is and my only role is to have faith in His ability to love us beyond any earthly definition. That seems super short and sweet, but that really is the only way for me to comprehend the vastness of God and how He works in this world.

• In Matthew 22, Jesus calls us to love God first and then to love others before ourselves. Which is easier for you: loving God, or others?

It is so much easier for me to love God than others. I love God with all of my heart. At one point in my life I thought I could have been a nun because I do that so well. Loving others takes so much effort. I have to let them in to know me and I have to be willing to know them. With God it seems easy‘¦He already knows me‘¦the good and the bad.

My personal mission statement is to Love God. Reflect Jesus. It helps me frame the action part of who I am and what I do in the context of Christ. How would He respond to the homeless person I am pulling up to on the road? How would He respond to my defiant 4 year old? How would He respond to my husband who just asked for help with something while I want to watch a show? By running things through that filter I am able to love others better than I have in the past.

Carey Bailey is a woman who loves to dance around the living room with her husband to Michael Jackson, loves Blue Bell Pralines and Cream ice cream, loves reading to her kids in a tree house, and loves having Jesus as her BFF!

She is self professed candy junkie but sugar will never match her deep desire for helping women satisfy their cravings for abundant life. She does this through life coaching, speaking, and by sharing a one-of-a-kind devotional she authored, Cravings {The Devotional}.

You can connect with Carey through her web-site, facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram.