Moments in Grace

It happened on that busy pre-Christmas Saturday, amidst the whirl and spin of preparation.     The light bulbs began raining. Or more specifically, it began raining out of the light bulbs. That’s what my four year old said as he ran for help, when, as he was sitting in the living room he saw water raining from the ceiling out of the living room light bulb. No one believed him at first.   But he was thankfully persistent and in a moment people came running to see this spectacle of amazement, this miracle of sorts.   Because who ever heard of raining light bulbs? And where was Momma?   Well, I was Christmas shopping on the one day that there was time for that.   And Daddy was in charge.   He said it happened in five minutes.   In five amazing minutes our two year old, who apparently was raised by chimpanzees, climbed up on the toilet, then from the toilet he climbed up onto the sink, from there he reached up into the mirror medicine cabinet and proc

On the fall day that he brings a red Encyclopedia Britannica to church for AWANA Bible club, he gets a surprise, a love letter from God. He doesn’t have a Bible. And that thick red volume of pages looks as close to a Bible as anything and well, he is only six. He shows it to me as he is climbing into the big red van. “Look, Tonya, I brought my Bible today!” I glance at it briefly but I am hurrying seven children into the van; into car seats and boosters and tossing papers aside and I think, “Is that an encyclopedia?” But I really don’t have time to worry about it.   I really don’t have time to notice.   All I know is that we are late and hurrying again He didn’t grow up in a household of faith. We’ve only been bringing him to church for a year in the big red van but this six year old is teaching us some things about God that we sometimes forget.   Like, the fact that God loves us. I wrangle all these little ones into church and to their Bibl

On the morning that the snow was coming down all sleet and icy in gray October sky, she came.   She knocked on my front door, and we asked her in.   We asked her to sit down and would she join us for a moment? Join these six kids of mine and a friend and I, all sitting around the kitchen table having hot chocolate, and tea and coffee.   We were reading John chapter 3 while some kids were hanging upside down from couches. Some were wildly running.   And some were finding wool hats to put on so that the moment I said that we were finished they could run out into the snow/sleet whirl and enjoy a taste of the first glimpse of winter.   When she arrived we were almost done.   Almost done for the day with our Bible study time, and here she was, like she had been invited to the party. Like she had heard some unseen voice whispering to come in.   So, she knocked and she came. I don’t really know her.   I don’t really know her story, just enough to make you want to clo

So these kids of mine bring me a caterpillar in a jar, munching fall leaves, fat and striped.   He is munching, perched on a thin stick they have placed in the jar.   “Oh, look at that!”   the little ones exclaim. “Can we keep him, Mom?” “No, he has to go back outside so he can get ready for winter.   Caterpillars have to eat lots of leaves and get ready for their transformation into a butterfly.” “You mean he is going to become a butterfly?” “Yes, he will spin a cocoon and sleep all winter and in the spring he will hatch out as something completely new, a butterfly.” “Can’t we keep him just one day in the jar, so we can watch him?” “I guess but in the morning you have to let him go.” But by morning, he had spun himself into that dark cocoon hung by a silver thread to the dark wood.   He was already hidden and waiting for his change, his new life to begin. The girls had first found the caterpillar in my neighbor’s yard.   My neighbor Ammie, the one who tragical

There are days when you just can’t figure out where you went wrong.   You can’t determine how you got there or how to get back to where you were. You can be going along just fine and suddenly find yourself lost in some cave of despair.   Maybe that never happens to you.   Maybe it’s just me.   But in any case, maybe you realize you need a compass. Because life is full of places that you can just plain fall right off the map. And when you fall off the map, the only way back is with a compass. A compass that reads life and gives faithful directions.   And maybe what you need in that moment is just some deep down, soul-settling truth, for your True North.   Maybe what you need is to stop and first believe that your compass reads it right.   Because you can’t follow what you really don’t believe is leading you home. And if you don’t trust your compass, and you’re lost in some dark place, where will you turn? So sometimes you just

Our neighbors are moving.   And yesterday we said goodbye to the first friends we had made when we moved here.   They are not moving far but it will be harder to have play dates and for the kids to see each other.   We are sad to see them go.   We said goodbye with some tears.   Later in the day, the doorbell rings.   It is the neighbor girl bringing us a card.   Joy.   Just joy.   I think of all the neighborhood kids we have brought to church.   I think of all the kids we have prayed for and had over for Backyard Bible Clubs and the endless hours of our yard filled to overflowing with kids by the dozen.   And I am undone by grace. Because this was not my plan. Oh, I have spent years trying to protect my kids from the “world”, to keep them “safe”, to make sure they were doing the “right” things.   I endlessly questioned if they should even play with kids in the neighborhood and what about the bad influences and what does it mean to be a good Christian paren

So maybe your days have been hard lately. Maybe just breathing seems hard.  Like your lungs can't seem to fill fully. Maybe you wake up every day and just...try...to...survive. Yeah, I know you. I've been there. Lately.  I've been there. Stressed out, crushed by life, drowning. Because last school year I thought I just might have a nervous breakdown.  And my only hope was that something, somewhere would change.  And one day into this school year I was a crying mess.  After one day.  Because everything bad about last year had followed me here.  Maybe you've been there? And the thing that you hoped in seems crushed?  The hope of easier is abandoned? Maybe you're not a homeschooling mother of six like me.  Maybe you don't have kids with learning struggles, processing problems and attention deficit. A toddler that screams nonstop and two other small boys that think wrestling is actually a school subject.  A teenager with a busy spo

The sky filtering from brilliant blue to softest pink as we make the two hour drive home from Grandma’s house, just me and the kids.   My thirteen year old is sitting up front and we are telling God stories, and he asks me to tell my best God story again, the one about how I got adopted into the family of the Great King.   It is a great story. And I can’t resist telling it.   I love to tell it.   It was the best day of my whole life.   The day Jesus rescued me, it was dramatic, and I tell again how my two friends Deb and Rach had been reaching out to me in all my darkness, loving me when I was so unlovable.   How they loved me when no one else did and I knew there are was something different in their lives, some kind of love that I desperately needed.   Love that I didn’t get from partying, relationships, or New Age spirituality.   Love that only Jesus could give. I tell how that Friday morning, on the way to class at college, Deb had tried to tell me about Jesus