Mommy Dilemmas

I have been talking with friends lately about the process of growing up. I mean, I guess I'm already a grown-up, but I'm still a person in progress. One common point, especially among those of us who have grown up in the church, is that we remember the world being black and white when we were young. You know - making judgments between right and wrong was pretty easy, especially when you were armed with Sunday School dogma. We edit Bible stories for our kids and feed them only the parts that are easy to understand. We hand them an incomplete measuring stick to hold up to the world around them. We never try to explain the sin in the lives of Bible heroes - that makes it pretty tough to understand...well....to understand the level of personal perfection we are supposed to aspire to. I mean, if adulterers and drunks can become heroes of righteousness, couldn't anybody? We can't have that, can we? What if our kids think it's okay to sin?!?!
Life becomes so much more gray as you get older. That's a common human experience. What do we do with that?
I was reading to my kids tonight, and my son said something - I really don't recall what it was - that reminded me of his own tendency toward the black and white. He's a guy who stands for Truth, Justice and the American Way. Really, he's straight as an arrow (he was born that way). I suddenly wondered about his own transition into adulthood. How would he handle the muddying of his Scales of Justice?
I'm not claiming to have any answers here, it's a new question for me. I am struggling with the desire to make the world a place my children feel safe and at the same time I know that I am responsible to help them transition into the grown-up world. I don't think it's easy, and it's probably not right, to sit a six-year-old down and tell her about King David's little Bathsheeba issue. Maybe my nine-year-old could handle the picture of Noah, laying naked and drunk in his tent, but I'm not sure.
The ability to navigate life's murky spots is make-or-break when it comes to faith. And I want it to be a "make" for my own children. To clarify, though, I don't want it to be something I have driven into their little skulls with a rubber mallet - I want it to be a faith-affirming gift that I hand to them.
Of course, one of the keys is teaching them about grace. Grace for one's fellow man and for the issues that you may disagree about. God's grace for the miserable failure that I am and you are and they will be.
But I struggle, even as a real grown-up, with the concept of grace. It's hard for me to accept for myself. I'll never be good enough, but I am driven to try to be good enough anyway.
How can I pass on a gift to my children that is not yet in my own hands?

<3 Christy