Moments in Grace

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...

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 ...

Sometimes it's the little things that test you and try you.  Like three weeks of flu. Like a house packed full of fever and people, packed too closely in cold January days. Like six home schooled kids stuck indoors coughing all over, sick of maybe ... each other? And the January slump rolls on. Endless day after endless day of sick.  Sick of being cramped indoors.  Sick of school.  Sick of sick. And yet, even in the midst of the desert, He gives streams. And this past January weekend, January usually so full of cold and snow, spring appeared to warm our aching lungs. When you just feel like maybe you can't breathe one more broken breath, suddenly warm spring air comes, fills languid lungs.  With the cool damp of the melting snow, it comes.  Grace comes to fill our aching empty. Because even though you may be walking a desert, He still gives streams when you need them. And He doesn't always take you right out of the desert and into the l...

One thing about sickness in your house, it makes you want to disinfect. After a week of straight sick, with kids and hubby and lots of fevery flu, you just want to clean house.  So last night late, when all the sick kids were finally resting, I started my cleaning spree.  Clorox and green cleaner galore.  And that's when it happened.  The light came on.  I was in my bathroom working away with wipes when I looked up and noticed the vanity bulbs looked a tad dusty.  Just a tad, mind you.  Not a lot.  I hardly noticed it to tell you the truth.  But as I inspected closer I saw a thin layer of dust that covered the bulbs so completely that I really hadn't noticed that it was there.  Hadn't I just cleaned this before Christmas?  Maybe it got missed, I'm not really sure, but all I know is that it surprised me.  So I climbed up and began to wipe away at this supposed thin layer of dust.  It turns out it wasn't t...

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 ...