The New Year

I haven't posted in some time. I've been busy with CPE and Facebook. Also I felt that I'd become repetitive. So here is a new post.
When I was a teenager, 14 or so, I read Paul's letter to the Galatians and I was ecstatic. What good news. My mom immediately said that you have to be careful how you read that and it's easy to misinterpret. I had the experience of just as I was beginning to feel free of the law, the accuser, that there was a real joy to faith, I was slammed back into prison. Who was I to interpret Paul's "we know a person is justified not by works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ?" There must be some way that the Law continues to stand between us and Christ - Paul's just not very clear about it here. Otherwise I would not be made guilty by sermons leading to altar calls. And where would I be without guilt? Would I do anything but because of guilt and the sense that only by being obliged (and the very sense that I was obliged and not doing a good work simply qua selfless good work condemed even the "good" work that I might do with the taint of my own shoddy motives).
Only years later did I discover that Paul meant exactly what I thought he'd meant: Quit letting the law beat you up; quit letting the law keep you from a relationship with God.
In Christ I disovered that my hangup about God was entirely my own. God's like, "really you thought that?" Actually I had projected onto God the thoughts of my own super ego - that function of the subconscious that gets its energy from acting as a moral governor - although frequently its governance goes unexamined and expands its territory well beyond the bounds of its portfolio.
The odd thing is that as I've understood Grace I haven't lived in it. What's hampered me? mostly the good work of the super ego - that constant dripping "you don't really deserve it" that moves through my days like an ancient river.
What joy each day now when I realize that I'm living in grace and the sound on the super ego can go ignored, like a distant radio narrating a game I don't care about.