Moments in Grace

On the morning that the snow was coming down all sleet and icy in gray October sky, she came.   She knocked on my front door, and we asked her in.   We asked her to sit down and would she join us for a moment? Join these six kids of mine and a friend and I, all sitting around the kitchen table having hot chocolate, and tea and coffee.   We were reading John chapter 3 while some kids were hanging upside down from couches. Some were wildly running.   And some were finding wool hats to put on so that the moment I said that we were finished they could run out into the snow/sleet whirl and enjoy a taste of the first glimpse of winter.   When she arrived we were almost done.   Almost done for the day with our Bible study time, and here she was, like she had been invited to the party. Like she had heard some unseen voice whispering to come in.   So, she knocked and she came. I don’t really know her.   I don’t really know her sto...

So these kids of mine bring me a caterpillar in a jar, munching fall leaves, fat and striped.   He is munching, perched on a thin stick they have placed in the jar.   “Oh, look at that!”   the little ones exclaim. “Can we keep him, Mom?” “No, he has to go back outside so he can get ready for winter.   Caterpillars have to eat lots of leaves and get ready for their transformation into a butterfly.” “You mean he is going to become a butterfly?” “Yes, he will spin a cocoon and sleep all winter and in the spring he will hatch out as something completely new, a butterfly.” “Can’t we keep him just one day in the jar, so we can watch him?” “I guess but in the morning you have to let him go.” But by morning, he had spun himself into that dark cocoon hung by a silver thread to the dark wood.   He was already hidden and waiting for his change, his new life to begin. The girls had first found the caterpillar in my neighbor’s yard.   My neighbo...

There are days when you just can’t figure out where you went wrong.   You can’t determine how you got there or how to get back to where you were. You can be going along just fine and suddenly find yourself lost in some cave of despair.   Maybe that never happens to you.   Maybe it’s just me.   But in any case, maybe you realize you need a compass. Because life is full of places that you can just plain fall right off the map. And when you fall off the map, the only way back is with a compass. A compass that reads life and gives faithful directions.   And maybe what you need in that moment is just some deep down, soul-settling truth, for your True North.   Maybe what you need is to stop and first believe that your compass reads it right.   Because you can’t follow what you really don’t believe is leading you home. And if you don’t trust your compass, and you’re lost in some dark place, where w...

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 ...