Moments in Grace

I am the mother that almost wasn’t. I know, you find that hard to believe looking at my twelve passenger van and the herd of kids I wrangle but, yes, I am that. The mother that almost wasn’t,   except for …   grace. Yes, there almost wasn't piles of smelly dishes, and mountains of laundry,  shoes up the wazoo, and Legos gone wild, but there also almost wasn't tiny blonde tots with eyes like the ocean, and chubby hands that grab your face to pull you in close for a bubbling kiss.  Because if I wasn't a mother, I wouldn't have messes, my bamboo would gleam, but my arms would be ache-empty and I used to think I wanted it that way. Before I knew grace and God.   I was the kid who, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, would have said, photo journalist, poet maybe.   Kids?   They weren’t on the radar.   It’s hard to imagine how kids fit when you’re planning on traveling the world, telling stories with pictu...

I always wanted to live on the mission field.     I wanted to travel to faraway places, to take the gospel to people who had never heard.   I wanted the adventure, the passion, even, the sacrifice.   I thought that surely this is what God would have for me.   He would have wanted this, He would have made a way for me to go.   But when I married, two weeks after my 21 st birthday, it only took me a short time to realize that missions were the farthest thing from my husband’s life agenda.   Not because he doesn’t think they are important but because … he doesn’t travel well.   He hates eating anything remotely resembling foreign food.   He is just not the missions type and missions is not his ministry calling.   And I soon realized that moving to the mission field was not an option.   We’ve been married for almost 15 years now, and not much has changed.   There are no plans to become missionaries in Ecuado...

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 ...

Standing there, under the moonlight, I call to the girls, clad in dance uniforms, to come to the van so we can leave dance. My friend turns to me and says, "How are you?" "I'm...o.k." Liar. "Tired.  Me, I'm tired." He looked tired.  As tired as I felt. "Just twenty or so more years of tired. That's what we have isn't it?  It'll be that long before we get some peace, get some quiet, right?" Him, parked, with his big twelve passenger van next to my twelve passenger van packed full of eight kids, my six plus two carpoolers, in the frantic rush of dance practice and dinner and doing. "Don't tell me that.  There's got to be hope.  Hope?  That's all I've got right now." And all this week, all I've heard running in my head are just these words: Overwhelmed.  Crushed by life.  Unable. And I can't seem to get it together. I've felt it long and deep, this crushing, this breaking...

It has been a rough few weeks.  The kind that makes you want to just curl up in bed, covers pulled tight over head and never come out. The temptation in trials, sometimes, is to just forget who you are. Sunday, Pastor Steve preaches this message, about the tempting of Jesus, and I can feel it sinking deep into parched ground.  Oh, how I've needed to remember who I am, Whose I am. I am His. And it's this miracle of Grace that changes everything. I am His, not because I am good enough, I'll never be that. I am His, not because I get it right, but because He can't ever get it wrong. I am His, not because I work hard at it, but because He's told me to just believe that He already finished the work for me. I am His. And it's this trusting, this believing in His grace, that changes everything. I've spent over two years meditating on the book of Romans, trying to soak this grace deep into my pores. At morning devotions with the six kids, we ...

I walk paths of gray concrete almost every day for five years. Five years of walking and praying. Praying for this place and people who live here in this small corner of the wide world, and pray for God's grace. Five years, more than five years of this and me trying to be light in this small corner.  Light in darkness. Praying for ways to be light, to show the true Light that has come into this dark world, I walk. In the midst of hot summer, full of light, streaming, I was busy, so busy, raising this neighborhood full of kids. There were usually at least a dozen here everyday, many times sixteen and the week of neighborhood Bible club, there were thirty kids here every day and ministry too. But it's easy to get tired and feel like your time, your giving, your hospitality, it's not making any difference.  It's easy to let the hardness of ministry, of raising a neighborhood, and the conflict that goes with having sixteen kids at your small house all the tim...

 Fear can do strange things to you.  Things that just don't make sense. This child, struggling with all this fear, suddenly just can't go to sleep anymore.  He checks doors over and over again.  He checks windows.  He locks the car with the remote 12 times.  He asks for me to pray, please will you pray?  Again and again I do but this fear just keeps holding on. After sleepless nights, all these nights up with a child that just can't sleep, he finally says it. He says, "I think part of what I was afraid of is, well, what if Jesus comes back and I don't go?  I mean, I think I am afraid that I am going to be left behind." What?  "Why are you afraid of that? I mean, why would you be?" I probe.  This child knows the verses.  He has memorized them again and again in Awana.  He knows the truth of redemption.  He's prayed the prayer of salvation and been baptized.  We talk gospel everyday of his life.  Where ...

The man walked by us as we were standing in line to order our lunch, the post-church Sunday ritual. He stopped when he saw us, all eight of us standing there, little boys wiggling and squirming restlessly, older kids discussing the earth shattering decision of chicken sandwich versus chicken nuggets. He stopped and counted them. "Eeny, meeny, miny, and that one's Moe." He laughs and pats my husband on the back.  He leans in, friendly and whispers, "Are all these yours?  My, my, children are a blessing now aren't they." "Yes, they are," We grin and nod. He visits a while with Jon as they wait for their orders.   This older man, crown of white, so fatherly and wise, telling stories of grace and God. He talks of Jesus and kids and blessings.  Food comes, they part ways.  We eat our fast food in frenzy of kids and noise and chicken. I walk over to toss trash in a metal can and run into this tall grandfather again. "Thank you, have ...

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....