Moments in Grace

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 ...

She was pacing plank floors, at every turn stopping to watch at the window, wait.  The rain was coming down in rivulets on glass falling free from low December clouds.  She turned to see me come into the room and our eyes met for just a moment and I could see, sometimes the waiting isn't what brings you low it's the worry. "Are you getting nervous, Hannah?"  She looks away from me, into the drops pressing on glass. "Yeah.  I guess I thought she'd be here by now,"  "Me too.  But babies take time." We wait together, watching for signs of my eight year old niece's grandma to come to get her and her siblings so that they can meet their new baby brother or sister at the hospital.  Waiting and worry, they go all too well together.  Do all Christmas babies come this way?  With so much wondering and waiting and even worry? And hadn't I been doing some worrying and waiting of my own just a moment ago? When you're wa...

We have this one Christmas tradition, the kids and I. We read this book, An Orange For Frankie. It is a small thing, this little tradition.  The three year old, he says,"Here comes the train. Toot, toot!" Because in the story, there is a family with a bunch of kids, and they have a train, that runs right through their back yard. I can't imagine what that would be like, bunch of kids, train in your yard. Oh, wait, I can.  And here it comes, rumbling like a freight train, and it is one,  in my backyard. And this family, they do this amazing thing.  They feed the homeless folks who ride this train as it stops by their backyard. And in the story, this one morning near Christmas, the youngest boy, Frankie, he gives a homeless man who doesn't have a shirt on his back in the middle of this Michigan snow, his best sweater.  His Christmas sweater.  The one his sister made him. And the man, he is thankful. But Frankie, he finds out that ...

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 ...

We were hunting. Hunting for the perfect Christmas tree. Out on the tree farm, looking for Christmasy goodness in piny green. We rode the wagon filled with straw, far out into the back acreage, this Christmas tradition. When we come around the bend of trees, into the open field, we see. This year's pickings are slim. The field looks empty, hollow, and how are we going to find a tree here? We drove, with the six kids, 30 minutes out to the farm to go to our usual place, rode the wagon way out to the back forty only to find....pitiful, piny trees. We look and look and look. More people come up in wagon loads and we realize that if we don't make a choice quickly, there's going to be nothing left worth getting and it's either pick the least pitiful one or try to go somewhere else. We make our choice. "Do you think that if we turn it, the holes will be toward the wall, and you won't notice?" I ask hopefully. "Maybe....

All this fall beauty becoming woolly winter-white, streaming in the last rays of sunlight as fall turns winter. In the waning of light and fall, we see more of Him, His grace pouring fullness into our lives. This, the season of thanksgiving and fullness, of harvest and blessing, we remember all His grace.  That grace that makes us all His and all full of His light. And even though the light of this world is waning, still in this season, we remember that this too is the season of waiting, of anticipation, of the Light to come into the world. It's so easy to make this season of anticipation, a season of stuff, a season, of stuffing ourselves with food and possessions and we find ourselves full of all the wrong things, and empty in all the wrong ways. We were meant to be emptied of us, so we could be made full of Him. And all these dark days were meant to make us hungry for the Light. So that when it breaks, we are ready to embrace it. The Light of the W...