Moments in Grace

Standing at the sink, soap suds filling my hands I hear a voice behind me.   “Mom, I feel like I don’t have a purpose.   I mean, I can’t do anything well.   I’m not really good at anything, I don’t have any talents or whatever.   Why am I even here?” I know this question all too well, precious child.   In a world that manufactures idols out of ordinary people every day, where people make idols out of themselves, where movies, t.v. and social media continually tempt us to self-aggrandize and self-publicize, and where all it takes is one glance at another person’s facebook page to make you feel that all of life is a competition to be won and you are clearly the biggest loser that there ever was, yes, my child it can be hard to feel like you matter. But I need to tell you something. You matter to God. You are important to God. Because God, the eternal Creator of all things, does not make trash.   He does no...

So the kid down the street, the teenager we bring to church, he punches my son in the face….again. And this kid with no mother, and hardly a father, this kid who gets suspended from school at the drop of a hat because he….well, he punches everyone in the face who gets in his way, and how do you keep reaching the lost and the broken when they beat you up over and over again? This dilemma is not new. This is the struggle of every person who has ever set out to love lost and broken people in Jesus' name. Sometimes you get your nose bloodied. Sometimes you get wounded, because hurting people will hurt you .   It is not a matter of maybe.   It is only a matter of when and how.   It doesn’t mean that it is not hard.   Oh, yes it will be hard to love unlovely people.   It will be painful.   It will cost you something.   It will be ugly at times.   You will wonder if it is worth it.   You will want to quit. You will ...

When I met her for the first time, she looked ordinary to me, unassuming, like any grandmother, anywhere, with salt and pepper hair and a soft, generous smile.   How could I have known that I had met a hero?   On that very first mission trip, into the high Mexican desert, up the winding dirt roads to land of cactus and cattle and smiling children living in structures made of sticks tied together with twine, how could I have known that there was a gem buried in those desert mountains?   That there was a gem of a woman tucked away in the sparsely dotted folds of those mountains, a hero of a woman with a name like a gemstone.   Her name was Garnet. And this gem of a grandmother, she led our team up these winding mountain roads and we bounced and jarred over rocks and packed dirt in a white twelve-passenger van, she told us her stories. The stories of a life lived full out for Jesus. She told us that she had come to this desert land when she w...

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...

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 churc...

She said it the way people tell you they are going to take out the trash. A matter of fact.   Unemotional.   Because when you are taking out the trash, it just needs taken out. And maybe sometimes the ugly truth has to come out that way too. She said she was raped. She said that she just couldn’t hide it, because it’s the shame that rots your heart like so much garbage and she just wanted to be free.   And she said that she knew, she knew that God didn’t do this to her.   That He loved her.   She said that she wasn’t going to hide it because she knew, that this is the stuff God uses. This is the stuff God uses. He uses it to tell His story.   To tell the story of His redeeming grace.   That God can redeem anything.   Everything.   All things become grace in His glorious hand. And only grace can give you this kind of hope, the hope to come out of hiding, the hope to believe in beauty again. And I’ve ...

We were driving home, the snow blowing in white wisps across the icy blackness.  The heater of the car pouring forth hot air to warm our frozen fingers.  And she said it, these words, "How do you trust God?" This black winter night, we talked of God and grace and belief and how do you do this thing of trust? Our night had been spent at a support group for the grieving. Me, the support for my neighbor who lost her teenage son those years ago, the night she almost lost her life as well. How do you trust God? How do you trust, when you've lost everything, when your heart is ripped open, bloody and hemorrhaging, and how do you go on living? How do you? How do you learn to trust, to let go, when your whole life has been one unending day of clawing and clinging to control outcomes, to protect yourself, to keep danger at bay, to create your own world of complete safety.  And that....is incredibly hard work. But working hard, that's all she's ever know...