Moments in Grace

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 b...

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 subjec...

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 co...

I watch the rain falling softly from sky, brimming full in the morning dusky light.   I sit with Bible open, eating soul food, comtemplating mysteries.   My eyes brim full, heart too, as words pour from my lips to heaven and I know that this indeed is the fullest life.   Life in His Spirit. And these are the words that I read as my heart overflows like so much rain from heaven, “If you love me you will obey what I command.   And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth.   The world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.   But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you.   I will not leave you as orphans.”   John 14:15-18 He says this three times.   If you love me you will obey my commands.   For so long I thought that this was something for me to do to prove my love for Him.   That if I really loved him ...

I have looked for love in all the wrong places. I have looked for it in my marriage, in my kids, in my friends, in my career, in myself. I tried hard to love and failed miserably. I have redoubled my efforts to love and fallen short again and again because I was trying to do loving works without actual love in my heart, and that will never work. Love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.   The overflow of His life in us pouring out.   If we don’t love, then it is evidence that we need more of Him.   Not that we ever love perfectly, not that we ever get it completely right, but when we see our lack of love, it should cause us to ask one thing, for more of Jesus . The mission trip to Costa Rica for me was a place that God overflowed my cup.   A place where He filled me up with His love to pour me out on others.   But even more striking is the fact that I feel like I have lived way too long with less than His fullness. I ha...

I can’t believe that I am the mother of a teenager.   Officially. Thirteen years ago   I was twenty-two and smiling through contractions.   So excited for this new chapter of my life to begin, the one that made me a mother.   And it was 7 pm and I thought that this baby was coming any moment.    He didn’t arrive until 3:05 am. And by 1:30 am there was no smiling through the pain there was only screaming and pushing. And that is so how I have lived my life. Confident that I could handle the hard stuff until the hardest part hits you. And then there is only screaming and the thought that no ever told me it would be this way.  So much of my life has been that, just white knuckling it through. And on this cusp of teenager-life, I just want to stop and say, I’ve gotten a lot of this parenting stuff wrong. And mostly it was because I tried so very hard to get it exactly right.  And parenting is one of those things you will never g...

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 ...