Moments in Grace

There are days when you feel like the walls are going to close in on you and suck you down, collapsing into the mess of life.  January, this month of unending sickness it stretches on.  Just when you feel like you're coming out of it, the waves come crashing again and again, and if you're not careful, you could get sucked into the rip current of life and pulled out to sea.  Flailing and floundering until you feel that you've got no strength left to swim.  I was telling a friend at church on Sunday that I thought that we were coming out of it.  The sick subsiding from this house like the ocean tide, receding back to the depths where it belongs.  I walked in the door from saying that only moments earlier  to find my six year old running, hand over mouth, to the toilet to vomit.  Awesome. Then the next morning, awakening to another child sick with a fever and oh, is this ever going to end? I could feel it, the self pity rising like the tide coming in, see

It has been a rough few weeks.  The kind that makes you want to just curl up in bed, covers pulled tight over head and never come out. The temptation in trials, sometimes, is to just forget who you are. Sunday, Pastor Steve preaches this message, about the tempting of Jesus, and I can feel it sinking deep into parched ground.  Oh, how I've needed to remember who I am, Whose I am. I am His. And it's this miracle of Grace that changes everything. I am His, not because I am good enough, I'll never be that. I am His, not because I get it right, but because He can't ever get it wrong. I am His, not because I work hard at it, but because He's told me to just believe that He already finished the work for me. I am His. And it's this trusting, this believing in His grace, that changes everything. I've spent over two years meditating on the book of Romans, trying to soak this grace deep into my pores. At morning devotions with the six kids, we

Sometimes it's the little things that test you and try you.  Like three weeks of flu. Like a house packed full of fever and people, packed too closely in cold January days. Like six home schooled kids stuck indoors coughing all over, sick of maybe ... each other? And the January slump rolls on. Endless day after endless day of sick.  Sick of being cramped indoors.  Sick of school.  Sick of sick. And yet, even in the midst of the desert, He gives streams. And this past January weekend, January usually so full of cold and snow, spring appeared to warm our aching lungs. When you just feel like maybe you can't breathe one more broken breath, suddenly warm spring air comes, fills languid lungs.  With the cool damp of the melting snow, it comes.  Grace comes to fill our aching empty. Because even though you may be walking a desert, He still gives streams when you need them. And He doesn't always take you right out of the desert and into the lush pasture.  Som

One thing about sickness in your house, it makes you want to disinfect. After a week of straight sick, with kids and hubby and lots of fevery flu, you just want to clean house.  So last night late, when all the sick kids were finally resting, I started my cleaning spree.  Clorox and green cleaner galore.  And that's when it happened.  The light came on.  I was in my bathroom working away with wipes when I looked up and noticed the vanity bulbs looked a tad dusty.  Just a tad, mind you.  Not a lot.  I hardly noticed it to tell you the truth.  But as I inspected closer I saw a thin layer of dust that covered the bulbs so completely that I really hadn't noticed that it was there.  Hadn't I just cleaned this before Christmas?  Maybe it got missed, I'm not really sure, but all I know is that it surprised me.  So I climbed up and began to wipe away at this supposed thin layer of dust.  It turns out it wasn't thin.  There were layers of the stuff.  And a