Moments in Grace

I watch the rain falling softly from sky, brimming full in the morning dusky light.   I sit with Bible open, eating soul food, comtemplating mysteries.   My eyes brim full, heart too, as words pour from my lips to heaven and I know that this indeed is the fullest life.   Life in His Spirit. And these are the words that I read as my heart overflows like so much rain from heaven, “If you love me you will obey what I command.   And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth.   The world cannot accept Him because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.   But you know Him, for He lives with you and will be in you.   I will not leave you as orphans.”   John 14:15-18 He says this three times.   If you love me you will obey my commands.   For so long I thought that this was something for me to do to prove my love for Him.   That if I really loved him ...

I have looked for love in all the wrong places. I have looked for it in my marriage, in my kids, in my friends, in my career, in myself. I tried hard to love and failed miserably. I have redoubled my efforts to love and fallen short again and again because I was trying to do loving works without actual love in my heart, and that will never work. Love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.   The overflow of His life in us pouring out.   If we don’t love, then it is evidence that we need more of Him.   Not that we ever love perfectly, not that we ever get it completely right, but when we see our lack of love, it should cause us to ask one thing, for more of Jesus . The mission trip to Costa Rica for me was a place that God overflowed my cup.   A place where He filled me up with His love to pour me out on others.   But even more striking is the fact that I feel like I have lived way too long with less than His fullness. I ha...

I can’t believe that I am the mother of a teenager.   Officially. Thirteen years ago   I was twenty-two and smiling through contractions.   So excited for this new chapter of my life to begin, the one that made me a mother.   And it was 7 pm and I thought that this baby was coming any moment.    He didn’t arrive until 3:05 am. And by 1:30 am there was no smiling through the pain there was only screaming and pushing. And that is so how I have lived my life. Confident that I could handle the hard stuff until the hardest part hits you. And then there is only screaming and the thought that no ever told me it would be this way.  So much of my life has been that, just white knuckling it through. And on this cusp of teenager-life, I just want to stop and say, I’ve gotten a lot of this parenting stuff wrong. And mostly it was because I tried so very hard to get it exactly right.  And parenting is one of those things you will never g...

She said it the way people tell you they are going to take out the trash. A matter of fact.   Unemotional.   Because when you are taking out the trash, it just needs taken out. And maybe sometimes the ugly truth has to come out that way too. She said she was raped. She said that she just couldn’t hide it, because it’s the shame that rots your heart like so much garbage and she just wanted to be free.   And she said that she knew, she knew that God didn’t do this to her.   That He loved her.   She said that she wasn’t going to hide it because she knew, that this is the stuff God uses. This is the stuff God uses. He uses it to tell His story.   To tell the story of His redeeming grace.   That God can redeem anything.   Everything.   All things become grace in His glorious hand. And only grace can give you this kind of hope, the hope to come out of hiding, the hope to believe in beauty again. And I’ve ...

I think they were prophetic.   Those words I wrote the day I flew off to Costa Rica for a short term mission trip. That all we have is our little bit of nothing and just this… God's love. Because if I had to describe this trip in just one word, that would be it. Love. Because really that is all we have.   We can’t save the world but we can love it. And we can’t rescue them all but in love we can make a difference for one. And when the love of God compels us then the love of God directs us and the love of God is what changes us all. I went on this trip in faith that God had called me to go.   I went expecting to be poured out.   And I was.   But the truth is that when you give God’s love, you get so much more than you gave.  Because you can't out give God. He loved and so He gave His life for us.  And when we love like Him we give like Him but we are given so much more than we had before.  ...

  This week my youngest brother flew off in a plane to spend the next nine months in Africa, a place designated as the "hottest place on earth".  He said goodbye to his brand new fiancée, his friends, his family, to go and serve our country in a place most of us would hope to never go to.  I'm proud to call him family. And today is my day to fly. This step of faith, this flying leap, I'm off to Costa Rica with the team from church to go and make disciples in another corner of this vastly small world.  To go and see what God might do there with our little bit of nothing and just this... Love. And this backpack that I've had since I was eighteen, it went with me to college and was there when I gave my life to Christ that September night of freshman year, and the day after I chose to follow Christ, I bought that key chain,  the one that says, Love. And it reminds me that all we have and all we are is all of the love of God.  And we go to gi...

“Do you think there are oceans in heaven?”   He asks the question to our daughter. “Well, God made the oceans, so he must like them.   And where else would he put the dolphins and whales?” Because this place, it’s about as close to heaven as we’ve been. This place feels almost like home, tasting salt spray and sunshine-warm skin and glorious blue ocean-sky days.   All our family is gathered here, twenty-eight of us, gathered in this house by the sea sharing time away and together.   Four generations of us drinking in awestruck sunrises and sandy sun-filled afternoons and dusky crab sleuthing evenings. Card games and craft time and boogie boarding, surfing and sand castles.   We came to celebrate life. After a year of losses, both grandmothers passing, we came to remember the joys of family.   Great-grandpa, he’s 87, he came too, not even a year since the loss of his wife of more than fifty years...