Moments in Grace

So maybe the winter that never ends is really starting to get to you.   And after four solid months, now becoming five, of snow on the ground and biting wind and temperatures below freezing, you are longing for sun and trips to the park and just some warmth again.   It can be easy to start to complain.   It can be easy to start to whine a little. It can be easy to think of all the things you wish were different. And in these March days, maybe like me, you are reading through the Bible in a year and once again you come across this story in Numbers, this story of a people who found themselves complaining. And maybe you read these words and see yourself for a moment.   You look into the mirror of the Word and you see the ugly and the true and you realize that these words are an alarm for maybe…you. Because right there in the book of Numbers, is the story of the Israelites and their trip into the wilderness and how they got deliv...

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...

The sun came out today.  This is nothing short of a miracle because I think I had started to believe that it would never show its glowing orb again. I mean, we all know that winter always becomes spring, but why is it that in the throws of icy deadness it can be believed that this is all that there is? That is will always be that way. That this is a good as it gets. That life has taken a turn into ugly and there is no going back and you better just suck it up because this is all you're getting, the hard, misery of life.  The deadness of winter. But then, just when we think we can't take one more long dark night, one long miserable day, it happens.  Spring. Why is it always so hard to believe that God won't leave us in the dark forever?  That He loves us.  That He brings darkness, even death for a mysterious reason but the morning always comes. And spring, it always follows winter. And God's love endures forever....

There are days when you feel like the walls are going to close in on you and suck you down, collapsing into the mess of life.  January, this month of unending sickness it stretches on.  Just when you feel like you're coming out of it, the waves come crashing again and again, and if you're not careful, you could get sucked into the rip current of life and pulled out to sea.  Flailing and floundering until you feel that you've got no strength left to swim.  I was telling a friend at church on Sunday that I thought that we were coming out of it.  The sick subsiding from this house like the ocean tide, receding back to the depths where it belongs.  I walked in the door from saying that only moments earlier  to find my six year old running, hand over mouth, to the toilet to vomit.  Awesome. Then the next morning, awakening to another child sick with a fever and oh, is this ever going to end? I could feel it, the self pity rising l...

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 ...