Moments in Grace

It happened the day before Thanksgiving.     The day my world spun me a little farther off course, sent my faith flying like some planet hurling into the cosmos, sheathed in blackness. I should have been thankful.   I wasn’t very.   I was rocked, spinning, without a compass. Maybe you’ve been there? It was the day the pregnancy test came back positive, announcing the impending arrival of baby number seven into our family and all I could see ahead was suffering. I don’t have easy pregnancies.   They come with pain, months of vomiting and nausea, sometimes heart problems, sometimes high blood pressure, exhaustion, and the last time, I almost died. With my fourth baby I had to wear a heart monitor because my heart just wouldn’t keep up on me.   It raced out of control.   I couldn’t breathe and eat at the same time without difficulty.   I was in a constant state of exhaustion.   Baby number five ...

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...