Moments in Grace

Every December it happens.     This monumental, earth shattering strain that is the Christmas season in America.   The activities multiply, the rushing intensifies, the pressure of gifts to buy and events to attend, decorations to put up and food to cook, family to visit, and houses to clean, and as a woman, as a mother, the person who has to plan and orchrestrate the Christmas chaos for a family (in my case, a family with seven children) it can almost put you over the edge.   But as Christians somehow we know that this is wrong.   We know that Christmas is intended to be something other than this stress-inducing, materialistic, month long period of psychosis. This season that was meant to bring us the deepest peace, often brings us the most stress. This time that was meant to shine so much love in our hearts often makes us the most angry. These days that were meant to fill us with so much joy so often bring us pain. Ask me how I kno...

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 in...

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...