Moments in Grace

The moon reflecting on snow, moonlight dances white over wonder of winter. I sit inside with candles flickering against the night air, heavy with the expectation of snow. Holding this pajama clad blond boy, coughing croupy, sick eyed and still. The others are visiting grandma and grandpa and the house is quiet and dim. The doctor said she couldn't believe it was croup.  When I called and said it was croup, they didn't believe it because they usually see it only in the fall or spring but yes, it sure is croup, she said.  "But this croup isn't that bad, it sounds worse than it is," she encouraged. I'd said that I knew, because I'd seen bad croup.  So bad that it sent my firstborn to the hospital.  At that doctor appointment the pediatrician took one look at us and told me to hold tight because he was calling for an ambulance.  Me, pregnant with daughter and holding my lethargic feverish son, climbed into the ambulance and rode ...

She was pacing plank floors, at every turn stopping to watch at the window, wait.  The rain was coming down in rivulets on glass falling free from low December clouds.  She turned to see me come into the room and our eyes met for just a moment and I could see, sometimes the waiting isn't what brings you low it's the worry. "Are you getting nervous, Hannah?"  She looks away from me, into the drops pressing on glass. "Yeah.  I guess I thought she'd be here by now,"  "Me too.  But babies take time." We wait together, watching for signs of my eight year old niece's grandma to come to get her and her siblings so that they can meet their new baby brother or sister at the hospital.  Waiting and worry, they go all too well together.  Do all Christmas babies come this way?  With so much wondering and waiting and even worry? And hadn't I been doing some worrying and waiting of my own just a moment ago? When you're wa...

We have this one Christmas tradition, the kids and I. We read this book, An Orange For Frankie. It is a small thing, this little tradition.  The three year old, he says,"Here comes the train. Toot, toot!" Because in the story, there is a family with a bunch of kids, and they have a train, that runs right through their back yard. I can't imagine what that would be like, bunch of kids, train in your yard. Oh, wait, I can.  And here it comes, rumbling like a freight train, and it is one,  in my backyard. And this family, they do this amazing thing.  They feed the homeless folks who ride this train as it stops by their backyard. And in the story, this one morning near Christmas, the youngest boy, Frankie, he gives a homeless man who doesn't have a shirt on his back in the middle of this Michigan snow, his best sweater.  His Christmas sweater.  The one his sister made him. And the man, he is thankful. But Frankie, he finds out that ...

I walk paths of gray concrete almost every day for five years. Five years of walking and praying. Praying for this place and people who live here in this small corner of the wide world, and pray for God's grace. Five years, more than five years of this and me trying to be light in this small corner.  Light in darkness. Praying for ways to be light, to show the true Light that has come into this dark world, I walk. In the midst of hot summer, full of light, streaming, I was busy, so busy, raising this neighborhood full of kids. There were usually at least a dozen here everyday, many times sixteen and the week of neighborhood Bible club, there were thirty kids here every day and ministry too. But it's easy to get tired and feel like your time, your giving, your hospitality, it's not making any difference.  It's easy to let the hardness of ministry, of raising a neighborhood, and the conflict that goes with having sixteen kids at your small house all the tim...

 Fear can do strange things to you.  Things that just don't make sense. This child, struggling with all this fear, suddenly just can't go to sleep anymore.  He checks doors over and over again.  He checks windows.  He locks the car with the remote 12 times.  He asks for me to pray, please will you pray?  Again and again I do but this fear just keeps holding on. After sleepless nights, all these nights up with a child that just can't sleep, he finally says it. He says, "I think part of what I was afraid of is, well, what if Jesus comes back and I don't go?  I mean, I think I am afraid that I am going to be left behind." What?  "Why are you afraid of that? I mean, why would you be?" I probe.  This child knows the verses.  He has memorized them again and again in Awana.  He knows the truth of redemption.  He's prayed the prayer of salvation and been baptized.  We talk gospel everyday of his life.  Where ...

We were hunting. Hunting for the perfect Christmas tree. Out on the tree farm, looking for Christmasy goodness in piny green. We rode the wagon filled with straw, far out into the back acreage, this Christmas tradition. When we come around the bend of trees, into the open field, we see. This year's pickings are slim. The field looks empty, hollow, and how are we going to find a tree here? We drove, with the six kids, 30 minutes out to the farm to go to our usual place, rode the wagon way out to the back forty only to find....pitiful, piny trees. We look and look and look. More people come up in wagon loads and we realize that if we don't make a choice quickly, there's going to be nothing left worth getting and it's either pick the least pitiful one or try to go somewhere else. We make our choice. "Do you think that if we turn it, the holes will be toward the wall, and you won't notice?" I ask hopefully. "Maybe....

All this fall beauty becoming woolly winter-white, streaming in the last rays of sunlight as fall turns winter. In the waning of light and fall, we see more of Him, His grace pouring fullness into our lives. This, the season of thanksgiving and fullness, of harvest and blessing, we remember all His grace.  That grace that makes us all His and all full of His light. And even though the light of this world is waning, still in this season, we remember that this too is the season of waiting, of anticipation, of the Light to come into the world. It's so easy to make this season of anticipation, a season of stuff, a season, of stuffing ourselves with food and possessions and we find ourselves full of all the wrong things, and empty in all the wrong ways. We were meant to be emptied of us, so we could be made full of Him. And all these dark days were meant to make us hungry for the Light. So that when it breaks, we are ready to embrace it. The Light of the W...

It was Thanksgiving Eve and I was making dinner.  Putting a roast chicken in the oven, scrubbing potatoes, when the frantic knock came at the door.  Through the glass I could see my neighbor, motioning frantically for me to hurry, hurry. I open the door. She grabs it open and points at the sky.  She says the ghetto bird is circling and I need to pull the kids off the street, you just don't know who might be prowling.  I look and see the police helicopter circling in the clear blue sky.  She's talking fast and frantic.  She says she followed it all the way from the main road into our little suburb and why is it here?  Why?  And she says she left her ghetto neighborhood these months ago to get away from that bird, and why is it circling again?  It's not supposed to be like this here. She left that house and all the dark memories for a better life.  That house where her firstborn died, where she almost did too, and it's not s...

The man walked by us as we were standing in line to order our lunch, the post-church Sunday ritual. He stopped when he saw us, all eight of us standing there, little boys wiggling and squirming restlessly, older kids discussing the earth shattering decision of chicken sandwich versus chicken nuggets. He stopped and counted them. "Eeny, meeny, miny, and that one's Moe." He laughs and pats my husband on the back.  He leans in, friendly and whispers, "Are all these yours?  My, my, children are a blessing now aren't they." "Yes, they are," We grin and nod. He visits a while with Jon as they wait for their orders.   This older man, crown of white, so fatherly and wise, telling stories of grace and God. He talks of Jesus and kids and blessings.  Food comes, they part ways.  We eat our fast food in frenzy of kids and noise and chicken. I walk over to toss trash in a metal can and run into this tall grandfather again. "Thank you, have ...

This.   The everyday mayhem of six kids and homeschooling and messes and just life. This is what it is.  And it is so easy to just fall off the map.  Just feet moving forward but blindly. Days of difficulty and before you know it you're lost...in life. Lost in the day and consumed with the stuff of it,  and it is so very easy to just miss God. When you are busy, so very busy with the details and the dailies, you can just plain fall off this map and fall apart, and how did I get here? And where was I going? And life can just suck the life out of you. And these hands want to give, live open, live full but there are days when you just feel like you've got nothing to give. My girl she says this.  In the middle of the spelling lesson, the daily meltdown, this dyslexic child screams it, "I just can't do this!  I'm just a failure and I fail every single day and what is the point of doing this if I'm just going to fail again?" I know....

Standing in the line at the voting precinct, I'm smiling to myself.  There's just something about election day that awakens hope.  But there in front of me I met a man who has lived cynical. Cynical is easy to live. He was standing in front of me and said that in his 57 years, this was the first time he had ever come to vote.  He told me that he watches eight hours of news a day, and well, maybe all that overwhelming flood of cynicism had done something to him. But here he was, standing in front of me, about to sign his name on the register of people who had come to be heard, to be a voice that had too long been silent. He said that he had complained about the president and the government but he never did anything about it, and so here, today, he was finally going to be heard. And what I saw in those eyes was a light, like a candle in a storm, it was, I think, hope. We talked about our party and the candidates and the issues and all this hope of chang...

The sounds of laughing boys and running feet on crunching leaves meet my ears as we stand under gray November sky. The park is empty this day except for my boys and two little girls about 8 or 9 swinging. The girls eyes keep finding their way over to us and they are watching the running of these four, all fire and pulsing. The toddling one year old plunges over to them in curious wonder, running and then stopping short a few feet away, innocence pondering at these friends. And the girl full of her own curiosity, she calls, "Can I see your baby?" "Sure," I say. Her brown fingers gently stroke his corn silk tufts.  He looks up at her, his pieces of sky reflecting her chocolate-almond eyes. "I like his hair, it's so nice," she says with so much sugar. "Thank you, but I like yours." And I do.  Under this November sky I watch how it blows wild, like ten thousand sprigs of softest warm wool, dancing. Held back only by a head band, t...

"Mom, he did it again!" "That boy down the street, he hit me again!" My son comes running in from the street, feet pounding and heart wrenching again. Conflict. It's been my constant companion. I'm not sure how we got here, to this place of conflict on every side, but I do know that I hate it. Loathe it. Pray for release from it. And yet for these many months conflict continues.  Conflict with neighborhood kids, with friends, with family, with myself over just how to handle all this mess. And I wonder, is this also grace?  Where is God in this? And how could this be His will, how could it? These are the days that I long for the quiet country lane, for the desert island, even for the cave in mountainside.  Anywhere, to be free from this constant scraping away at my heart.  But I remember another beloved of God who knew years of conflict, who spent days and nights in caves, hiding from those who would harm him.  David, thi...

There are days. Days when you feel like you just want to quit.  Life. And you think, there must be something I'm missing. Some secret to success, some plan of action that smooths out all bumps, that makes easy the hard, gritty of this life. There must be. So I ask Cathy, this mom of six with three that have flown her nest, she knows this struggle of homeschooling six kids and the messy of life. I ask, "How?" And her words full of grace and truth reply, "I have no words of wisdom for you.  It's hard.  Somethings in life you just have to go through." Yes. And I say, "My friend, those are words of wisdom.  They are." Because sometimes in life, people can't give you directions to the easy path.  Because sometimes there isn't one. And it's only when you finally accept the path you're on, and that it just might be rocky, and your shoes might split open, bleeding toes and blistered heels, and when you accept that th...

One of the things about perfectionism is that it sucks the life out of you. It steals your joy. It robs you of grace. And the Joy of Lord is to be our strength. So, if someone stole it, you're not going to be able to stand. You can't stand against the struggles of life. You can't endure enemy attacks.  But maybe the biggest enemy sometimes, is me. I'm the one fighting to prove something.  Fighting to be perfect. But somehow my foot gets into my mouth more than I'd like it to. And I'd rather not chew toenails but this foot keeps finding mouth, and words better left unsaid come spewing. And how do you grasp groping sentences from sifted starlight flowing, and how do you make sense of messes that are mostly your own making? This weekend I've been wiping walls covered in smudges from small fingers.  Painting fresh color over all the dull of house and life and moaning.  Moaning about me. And so joy has been eluding me these hours and makin...

We were driving down the highway, sun filtering through glass, looking deep into leaves putting on their beautied best, and dancing warm in sunlight. We're looking, longing for...light and beauty to filter into eye and soul and penetrate from tree to me, and golden silence hanging. And then, I hear it, "These trees, they are beautiful, right?  But they do this, they change colors because...because they're dying?" "I mean, God, He planned it this way, they only become beautiful when they are dying?" And why is it so true? That this, all this glory, is only seen in the dying. And I think of all the losses we've had, all the people who have gone on to Heaven these past two years, and I see it, this glory.  This reminding that it's only through death that we can finally enter life. This beauty in death that is seen only in Christ.  And this death becoming life, and beauty. And Jesus said,"Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the gro...

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. We live in a house that is slightly cramped for eight people.  It has three bedrooms, one of which will soon be holding four boys in a space that is well, tiny. They have one duo bunk bed and they rather enjoy sharing.  It's me who sometimes struggles with this thing of treasure. We have lived other places, in other houses that were bigger but this treasure lesson is rarely learned without the losing of something.  When we were first married we lived in my Grandma's house in the upstairs which had been converted into a one bedroom apartment.  When we discovered we were pregnant, we thought that we needed a bigger place, a much bigger place, because this baby couldn't possibly live in this tiny apartment.  So, we set out on our journey to find a house that we could afford, or maybe not afford but what we thought we needed. We found a small ranch house that would have been great, but my wonderful husba...

In a week full of doctor's appointments, house painting, homeschooling, soccer games, dance practice, and crazy mess, it's easy to lose your peace and joy.  Holding on to it is the hard part. As the week wore on amid the mess of ripping apart rooms to paint them, the interruption of  doctor's appointments, schoolwork uncompleted, and still holding on to peace until... There was this uninvited house guest. As I was going up to bed late Thursday night, bleary-eyed, and exhausted, I went down to the basement laundry room to get pajamas.  I stopped by the adjacent game shelf and that's when I saw the evidence, we were hosting a house guest.  A small, furry, long tailed guest that incessantly chews with his mouth open and leaves behind crumbs of drywall and wood.  As I stood there gaping at this small guest's dinner leftovers, I could feel the peace begin running right out through my toes.  And this anxious knot in my stomach, churning, and ten...

Tired.  I'm so tired today.  Perhaps it is the bleak, rolling gray clouds.  Or the overwhelming mess in my house from a weekend of painting walls, but nonetheless, tired is where I'm at. But I've been tired before.  Tired of trying to keep up the rules. Tired of trying to do it all right. Tired of trying to make my children holy (yes, I've even done that). Tired of trying. But when you finally get tired, that is the place when you finally realize you need rest. And you begin to see that all this working and struggling in your own strength is not bringing you any closer to peace, grace, or holiness. Then, there is only one thing left to do, Trust. This thing of trusting God with your life, it will change you. It doesn't mean sitting around doing nothing, it means learning to trust God to do it in you and through you. Living in the Spirit means that I trust God to do in me what I cannot do myself. Our biggest problem is that we always think w...