Moments in Grace

“You read me my Bible, Mommy?”   He asks this same question every single day sometimes several times a day, this three year old voice chirps like a baby bird hungering for more.   He carries his Bible everywhere and during morning family devotions he sits with his Bible storybook trying to follow along with the others. Each time I ask a question about any passage in the Bible that we have just read he says, “I know, I know!   Jesus die on the cross?” Yes, I say, Jesus did die on the cross for our sins. But this day as we are sitting in the afternoon sunlight, he asks for the story in his Bible storybook with the picture of the cave with the stone that is rolled away. First, we have to read the story of the cross, I say. So we do.   When we get to the picture of the cross, he knows this one by heart. “Jesus die on cross!   Jesus die on cross!   For us! See, see!” “Yes,” I say with a smile, “he did, but that is not the en...

The moon reflecting on snow, moonlight dances white over wonder of winter. I sit inside with candles flickering against the night air, heavy with the expectation of snow. Holding this pajama clad blond boy, coughing croupy, sick eyed and still. The others are visiting grandma and grandpa and the house is quiet and dim. The doctor said she couldn't believe it was croup.  When I called and said it was croup, they didn't believe it because they usually see it only in the fall or spring but yes, it sure is croup, she said.  "But this croup isn't that bad, it sounds worse than it is," she encouraged. I'd said that I knew, because I'd seen bad croup.  So bad that it sent my firstborn to the hospital.  At that doctor appointment the pediatrician took one look at us and told me to hold tight because he was calling for an ambulance.  Me, pregnant with daughter and holding my lethargic feverish son, climbed into the ambulance and rode ...