Confessions of a Rule Follower

I remember sitting at a small table while my mother taught me how to hold a crayon. How to recognize colors. How to stay inside the lines.

She was patient; but my four-year-old self couldn't stay inside the lines.

Not because I didn't understand or didn't want to. I just couldn't be still long enough to get it perfect. My lines were crooked. My colors spilled over. And no matter how many times I tried, it never quite looked the way it was supposed to.

My mother named it early—and repeated it often throughout my life.

"You're impatient."

I rejected that statement at first, but as I grew older, I began to recognize that she was right. Then, I decided that impatience was a flaw I needed to fix. That doing things the right way was not just a skill, it was a virtue.

So I learned to stay inside the lines.

What I didn't understand then — and what took me most of my life to begin to untangle — is that there are different kinds of rule-following. And they are not the same thing.

There is the obedience I give to God.

That one has never been a burden. Not once. When He saved me, He filled me with such joy, such love, that obedience felt less like a rule and more like a response. My parents modeled obedience to God before I was old enough to choose it for myself — and when I was old enough, I chose it gladly.

I still do.

Do I always get it right? No, but my heart always wants to.

I don't follow God because I expect something in return. I don't carry a quiet ledger of good deeds waiting to be credited. Obedience is not a transaction.

Obedience is what I owe Him.

That has always been clear to me. That has always felt like solid ground.

But then there is the other kind of rule-following.

The kind I learned from the world around me. From institutions. From expectations. From the unspoken agreement that if you do what you're told, keep your head down, stay in your lane — things will work out. People will be pleased. Life will cooperate.

That kind of rule-following is a different animal altogether.

And for a long time, I didn't know the difference.

Here's what I've come to understand:

Following rules outside of God's Word is not always obedience. Sometimes it's just fear dressed up in obedience's clothes.

Some of us color inside the lines out of the quiet fear that if we don't, no one will stay.

I've learned that always following directions — always deferring, always complying, always coloring inside someone else's lines — quietly stifled something in me. My creativity got smaller. My critical voice got softer. My ability to think for myself, to lead from within, to trust my own instincts — all of it learned to sit down and be still.

Like a four-year-old at a table, trying to get it perfect.

It wasn't until I began to write seriously — really write, the kind of writing that costs you something — that I started to understand what had been lost.

Because you cannot write true characters from inside a cage.

The women I write are strong and capable and used to holding everything together — until life refuses to cooperate. The men I write are confident and certain of their place in the world — until love or loss or faith asks something deeper of them. These are not tidy people. They don't stay inside the lines. They make mistakes that matter. They carry wounds they didn't choose. They wrestle with God in the dark and come away limping — and changed.

I couldn't write them until I was willing to go to some of those same places myself.

My faith journey didn't just inform my fiction. It is my fiction. Every story I feel called to tell is, at its root, a story about what happens when a person finally stops trying to earn what God has already freely given — and learns, slowly and imperfectly, to receive it.

That's not a craft decision. That's a testimony.

Here is what grace finally taught me:

Rules cannot save us.

I spent years trying to get it right — trying to be right — not understanding that righteousness was never mine to earn. Galatians 2:16 says it plainly: we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, not by the works of the law. Not by the careful lines. Not by the perfect coloring. Not by the compliance or the deference to others.

By faith in Jesus Christ. Only by faith in Jesus Christ.

That doesn't mean the lines don't matter. God's Word is not a suggestion. But it does mean that the lines were never the destination. They were always pointing somewhere else.

To Him. Only ever to Him.

And somewhere in that understanding, a writer found her voice. Not because she abandoned the rules of her faith — but because she finally understood which rules were His, and which ones were just someone else's coloring book.

That four-year-old at the table — the one whose colors spilled over, whose lines were crooked, who couldn't be still long enough to get it right?

She wasn't broken.

She was becoming.

And so am I.

"Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ... for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified." — Galatians 2:16, KJV

*Where have you colored inside someone else's lines out of fear rather than conviction? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.*