Moments in Grace

The path around the lake was a thing of beauty, blue sky blazing overhead in the crisp fall air. And I almost missed this.   In fact I have missed this over and over again for so many years. But not this time. The kids and I walk, hunters of beauty birthing, curious wanderings. We handle our field guides and nature notebooks like the novices we are but this glory can’t be missed even by the most ineffectual of us.   “Look! Look! A tree frog!” In Ohio, this is not a common sight and we stare in wonder. “Look at that caterpillar! It’s all white and fuzzy!” “Let’s identify that tree over there,” I say.   We walk, drinking in the splendor and I think, when was it that I had stopped believing this was possible? Faith is always the first step to joy. And it has been my doubt, my worries that have kept me wearied and burdened for far too long. “Can your worries add a single moment to your life?” ...

  So maybe you’ve been fighting the dark and the cold like some kind of polar vortex epic battle. And maybe you’ve been feeling like maybe the dark was winning. I think I can relate. Maybe your days have been hard and depression has been lurking like some kind of stealthy snow fox and maybe for a while you might have lost your way in all that blinding blurring snow.   Well, there is hope for people like us. People who sometimes get lost, and sometimes fall off the map, and sometimes can’t even remember what grace is let alone write about it and sometimes can’t even remember who they are. There is hope. When life turns you upside down and you can’t quite remember how to get back up, you can remember this….hope will find you. When, the day before Thanksgiving, I found out I was pregnant with our seventh child, I have to be honest and say, the wind was knocked out of me. And even for me who spent years working in the pro-lif...

The day was long and difficult.  It started early and jumped straight into chaos and the six kids and I were out the door and running.  Homeschool co-op classes, picking up a friend to come over, then on to the doctor's appointment. I was getting her hearing checked.  She had been having more trouble with her schoolwork and always misunderstanding what we were saying to her.  I suspected an auditory processing problem but ruling out the hearing issue was the first step.  Since my other daughter has had so many learning issues it would seem that this was minor. "Mariah, do you have trouble hearing what people say to you if they are standing behind you?" the doctor questioned. She shakes her head yes. "Do you need to look at people's faces in order to know what they are saying often?" "Yes." "Well, she failed her hearing test in both ears." The doctor says to me.  "She also failed her eye exam. We are going ...

This.   The everyday mayhem of six kids and homeschooling and messes and just life. This is what it is.  And it is so easy to just fall off the map.  Just feet moving forward but blindly. Days of difficulty and before you know it you're lost...in life. Lost in the day and consumed with the stuff of it,  and it is so very easy to just miss God. When you are busy, so very busy with the details and the dailies, you can just plain fall off this map and fall apart, and how did I get here? And where was I going? And life can just suck the life out of you. And these hands want to give, live open, live full but there are days when you just feel like you've got nothing to give. My girl she says this.  In the middle of the spelling lesson, the daily meltdown, this dyslexic child screams it, "I just can't do this!  I'm just a failure and I fail every single day and what is the point of doing this if I'm just going to fail again?" I know....