Gift of Grace

THINK

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. (John 1:16)

Grace. What is it, really? Do we know what it is and how it moves in our lives? We should.

noun \ˈgrās\

a  :  unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification b  :  a virtue coming from God c  :  a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace 

Have you ever purchased, wrapped, and given what you thought was the perfect gift? You eagerly await the moment when the intended recipient will open it and you are just a little giddy at how happy you know they'll be. Then, the big day arrives; and it's opened and cast aside with a pile of other gifts, nothing special noted, nothing special done with it.

You are crestfallen.

I wonder if that's how God feels about grace. He gives it freely to us--all we have to do is open the gift. Upon opening, if we are are willing to cooperate in His big gift-giving, we are suffused with Divine Assistance. I like the word "suffused." It's as if grace is light or golden liquid that fills every crevice of our being. We should dance for joy.

But lots of times we don't.

Instead, we worry. We worry that we don't deserve the gift given--that we're not good enough. But grace is undeserved! It's a gift; it's not a prize. Similarly, we worry that there won't be enough, that we can't earn enough favor with God to get our fill. We think we can't be good long enough or consistently enough to fill our tanks with grace every moment of every day. We have a scarcity mentality about grace, as if god were a stingy giver.

But that's not how grace works. 

He keeps giving it. Just ask.

And then, don't put it on shelf with the gifts too precious to use every day. 

Enjoy grace. 

Really. It's OK. You're allowed to inhale God's grace with every breath you take and you're allowed--no, encouraged--to actually enjoy it. Life isn't a drudgery of striving to merit God's abundant love. Life is a gift to be lived in the grace that overflows from the fullness of that love. 

PRAY

God, please grant me the grace to know your grace and to enjoy it with all my heart, mind, body, and soul. 

ACT

Just for today, make a list of all the times you notice grace in your life. Watch for it, welcome it, and enjoy it. 

Share your grace moments here, with us?

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If #morningrun blesses you, please share the image so that others can find us here?

Motherhood can feel like the loneliest vocation in the world. Surrounded by children, who frequently bring us to our knees, both literally and figuratively, we can be overwhelmed by isolation. Mothers need community. We can be community for one another. We can encourage on another and hold each other accountable. If you like these short devotions, please share the image and send another woman here. And when you're here, please take a moment to pray with another mother who is visiting. Leave a comment and when you do, pray for the woman whose comment is just above yours. Just a moment--blessed--will begin to build community.

I like to pray when I run in the morning. Often, I listen to Divine Office and pray Morning Prayer or the Office of Readings. Then, I just take up a conversation with God. I'd love to pray for you! Please leave your prayer requests below and we can pray for each other, no matter how we spend our morning prayer time. Meet me back here tomorrow and I'll share the ponderings from my #morningrun.

Gathering My Thoughts after a Long While

It's been a very long time since I've gathered my thoughts into one space here. About a week ago, I was too tired to run during soccer practice and too tired, even, to read. Just as I pulled into the parking lot, a friend texted and asked if we could catch up. I wasn't too tired talk. Among the many things we talked about in that hour or so, we happened upon my unintended writing sabbatical. And one of the things she reminded me was that I write to make sense of things for myself. That's very true. So, she continued, it's probably time to start writing again.

Here goes.

Outside my window:  Right now, it is dark outside my window. I'm in bed in "my" room in Charlottesville, where my father and stepmother live. The shutters are open and the windows are wide to let in the breeze. It was an absolutely perfect Virginia spring day. Everything but the the crepe myrtles are in bloom in this town, it seems. They'll be along later when they don't have to compete with the dogwoods and Bradford pears, and crabapples, and tulip trees. Every day, the world outside grows a little more green. I don't remember ever being quite so glad to see the spring as I am this year. 

Listening to:  The whir of the ceiling fan. The faint sound of Adventures in Odyssey coming from the little girls' room.  Incidentally, I love Odyssey. I feel like those characters are family; they've been along on so many road trips with us.

Clothing myself in: Today, I wore capris and t-shirt. But I had a chance to fancy up with lace and skirt tonight. We went with Patrick to a dinner celebrating the soccer team's NCAA National Championship title. He came away with quite a ring...

Talking with my children about these books:  The girls are all aflutter at the new Penderwicks book. In order to maintain some semblance of peace, we settled Karoline into re-reading the first one, and Katie re-reading the second while they waited for Mary Beth to binge on the fourth and then pass it along. Are you a Penderwicks fan? Such great stories!

In my own reading: I've been reading a lot these days, books on audio and books in hand. I've several to share. Recently, I finished The Rosie Project. it was a delightful, funny story of a professor with Asperger's syndrome who falls in love with a most unlikely "wife candidate." It was a sweet, touching, and also fascinating look at Asperger's through a very different lens.

Thinking and thinking: Oh, wow. I really wish I could turn off my brain sometimes. There have been days lately that I'm weary of living inside my own head. Mike went to a leadership workshop last week that focused on Myers-Briggs types. He learned his own and learned a good deal about typing in general. All very fascinating. I've long known my type (INFJ), but never really done much with it. I had never tried to type my husband or my children to see how we all fit together. Last week, I learned that I am vastly outnumbered by Thinking Extraverts. A house full of noisy commanders who leave it to me to feel all the things. And I do. Oh, how I do. For all of us. Ahem. 

 I'm also reading: The Highly Sensitive Person. Because I am one, and they are not (bless their hearts). Are you highly sensitive?

Pondering: Elizabeth DeHority died on Holy Thursday. That was more than two weeks ago. I keep reaching for my phone to text her. I keep expecting to see an email in my inbox. Before the Tuesday before she died, I don't think I've gone more than a day in the last six-and-a-half years without hearing from her. The silence is striking. Ann and Ginny both wrote lovely tributes.  I didn't. I can't find the words. I did start a new knitting project, though. 

Carefully Cultivating Rhythm: I think we are maintaining as much of a regular rhythm as I can expect. I'm driving back and forth to Charlottesville every couple of weeks for one thing or another. Patrick will have surgery in early May and will need to stay here all summer for physical therapy and conditioning. I cannot begin to adequately capture how grateful I am that he chose to go to school here, in this town. I love to be here. And I have a home here. For a kid who moved around a whole lot, "home" is something not to be taken for granted. 

Creating By Hand:  Ugh. I'm sewing dance costumes and not loving it much at all. it's not real sewing--it's rigging to make costumes fit well enough to fool the audience. Oliver + S just announced a super cute new pattern. I plan to make at least four of these. I really miss sewing and I  recognize how important using that part of my brain and my hands in that manner is to me. Making time...

Learning lessons In: Grief. And fear. April is always hard in the fear department. This April has been brutal.

Encouraging learning in: Carefully reading the assignment, doing exactly what one is asked to do, and completing it cheerfully and on time. As homeschoolers, one of the biggest benefits is the ability to tailor a lesson, a course, or an entire childhood education. If the lesson as written goes on and on with endless repetition well beyond what is necessary for mastery, we just cut it short. If the method doesn’t work, we switch to something else.  Creativity is encouraged wildly. Rarely is a kid sent off on his own to muddle through vague directions. We’re right there to keep things on course. And if they were away all weekend at a soccer tournament and the bus broke down on the way home and it’s early on Monday and they’re tired, I cut them all kinds of slack. What I’m learning though, is that they need to learn how to work that other system—the institutional system—before they leave home. They need to understand how to follow directions and that sometimes we do stupid assignments because that’s what it takes to get through the class. Unless I teach them how it all works, they’re in for quite a shock.  I’m not sure how to balance the reality that they need those institutional skills with my own philosophy that everything must have meaning and the best education is a creative one, carefully tailored towards a child’s strengths. Daily, there is a striving for balance between two worlds.

Begging prayers: For rest. Please Lord, peaceful rest. 

Living the Liturgy: I love the Easter season. I love to occasionally to something special and out of the ordinary and then just nonchalantly explain it to my children by saying, "Oh, of course, it's still Easter." Mike has been traveling a brutal lot. Sarah and I got up early one morning when we knew he was taking the first flight home. They had a breakfast tea party. Because, you know, it's still Easter.

Keeping house: I've been spending a lot of time in my other home--the one in Charlottesville where my father and stepmother live. It's a beautiful house that is beautifully decorated. There is no clutter. Every time I come down, one of my children will remark that they love a house with no clutter. But then we get home, and they're all about their clutter. I will not wish away these days for an empty nest. I will keep shoveling clutter in this season of clutterstorms, though.

Crafting in the kitchen: Today begins Heather's Whole Food Kitchen Workshop. Perfect Timing. What I love (among other things) about Heather's workshop is that it's not didactic; there's no cramming one way of eating down one's throat. Heather acknowledges that each of us has to find her own way to nourish. What works for me, might not work for you. I've really seen that in my house the last couple weeks. My husband is rocking a low carb diet. He's hit that place where weight is dropping very steadily. I'm eating the same way. Up two pounds. ;-). [Note: this is not an ad for the workshop, Just passing along friendly information. I'm not being compensated for my wholehearted endorsement.]

Speaking of ads, there are no more here. I heard you. I am very, very grateful for the people who sponsored this blog and I hope that you benefited from knowing about them. But for now, we'll just have quiet. I can do quiet very nicely. Of that, I am sure. 

To be fit and happy: The trails are truly calling. Everything is coming alive outside and I'm happily trotting along again--some walking (long distances) and some running (not long distances at all). I've been reunited with my Fitbit, charged the battery, and began anew today. Gretchen Rubin's new book, Better Than Before, has reminded me how monitoring my habits really works for me. Track my steps: move a lot more. Keep a food diary: eat more mindfully. Tell you all about a sewing project with needle & thREAD: sew more and read more. Accountability is a very good thing. Springtime is a great time for a habit refresh! And that book? Highly, highly recommended. Life-changing, I do believe. 

Giving thanks: For my stepmother. Charlottesville has long been home to me. Her house is my soft place to land. I'm grateful for the comfort I find there. 

Loving the moments: Kristin and I have been brainstorming some super fun project ideas. Stay tuned for a homeschool workshop and an advent journal and maybe something special for new mamas. Not a day goes by that I'm not completely and totally awestruck by how much I love that girl. She might be midlife's best surprise.

Planning for the week ahead: The bluebells are blooming. That's all the plan I've got. 

Opening myself to His presence.

THINK

When we are disheartened and feel desolate, we must present our needs to God, convinced that God will answer us according to our needs. We can say to God, "It is enough for me to present myself to you as I am. You will provide for my miseries and necessities as You see fit." While God never gives us an excess of our self-centered wants, God never fails to supply what is necessary for our well-being if we are open to God' presence in our life. -St. Francis de Sales

PRAY

Today, Lord, I'm standing in front of you, as bare as Eve in the garden. I see all my miseries so clearly and I see my wants as well. You know--so much better than I do--where my needs end and my self-centered wants begin. Sift those for me, God, and infuse me for true gratitude as I become aware of how You meet all my true needs. 

ACT

Take a walk in the changing season today. Notice the details. He's attended to every leaf, every bud-becoming-a-flower, every bird gathering for its nest. god really is detail-oriented. Our time in nature, noticing the littlest of things, can bring about a peace in our lives, even where there are big, huge things we hesitate to entrust to God. Turn your face to the sun; trust god with all your miseries and necessities.

Wrapping words around His Word

It’s a good thing Easter is a season, because Lent was loath to let go. The week before Easter, my brother-in-law died. Before the suitcase was unpacked after his funeral, a very dear friend died in the early morning of Holy Thursday. And Good Friday was cold and dark and a little scarier than usual this year.

Easter bloomed with sunshine and the promise of hope, but my very tired eyes squinted in the glare of the brightness, and all I really wanted was to sleep a deep and untroubled sleep. It would be yet another week before that sleep came.

“Dig deep,” she said, as I drove the familiar expanse of Route 29 to the hospital two hours away for another consultation with an injured child and an expert doctor. It was the second time I’d done the drive in three days. These appointments, so necessary and so important, were wedged between travel and funerals and the biggest holiday of the Christian year. 

“Dig deep and soldier on; you can do it.” 

She meant well. She really did. What I needed, though, was not to dig deep. My strength couldn’t come from inside of me. My strength — if I was to indeed soldier on — could only come from a deep and abiding trust that God has a plan and that plan is good — even for me, even in a season of sorrow. But how? How to draw upon His grace and His promise in order to have strength for the battle raging around me?

With words.

Somewhere in the haze of those intense weeks, two of my grown children had a sticky situation with a third person. It was a sad misunderstanding that left all three of us searching for answers and trying to make sense. I turned it all over in my weary brain for a couple of days, and then I pulled out my Bible and began to read and write. And write and write. The words spilled fluidly onto the page, making sense of the mess as they appeared in black and white. God’s Word, wrapping itself around my words, shoring me up, parenting for me. This was the way things should work. All the time.

I am a word person. I encounter God in His words. His Word. When I put pen to paper and interact with the Word, I make it my own and I can carry it around with me throughout the day, taking infusions of grace from it as I need them.

So, I took up the habit of carrying Him around with me — my Creator in the Word. I figured if I can’t make sense of it all, the Lord of the universe can. Mornings found me in Isaiah, grabbing hold of a verse and making it mine.  I've long had a quiet time habit that I still really love a lot, but this was different. First I’d write the verse in a journal. Then I’d write it back to myself, telling myself who God was and what He said. Then, I’d carry the journal with me everywhere and allow God to remind me as needed. It is real and tangible and personal. It is a habit that I have made mine forever.

“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name and you are mine” (Is 43:1).

You are God. You are the God who hung on the cross and chose to die for me. You have done the hard work. For me. You know my name and you call to me, using it. Even though this world seems to be arbitrarily spinning in every which direction, you are personal and intentional. You are calling my name. I really can hear you.

“When you pass through the waters I will be with you; and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you” (Is 43:2).

I see what you did there, God. You came right out and wrote the word “overwhelm” into your message to me. I trust you. When I feel overwhelmed, I will remember that you are with me and that you promise this raging water will not overwhelm. I’m not going to drown, even if it feels like it right now.

“Fear not, for I am with you. I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you” (Is 43: 5).

I’m actually driving from the east to the west to take care of my offspring today, Jesus. But since you know no boundaries of time or space, I suppose I understand your point. You keep telling me not to be afraid. These dear, precious children I love so much are yours first, and you know my heart. You have me. And you have them, too. 

“You are my witnesses,” says the Lord, “and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am He” (Is 43:10).

You are working in my life, God. In these extremely stressful days, you are alive and well, showing yourself to me. To me. So that I may know you better, believe you more, understand how much you love me and tell the world that really, truly God’s got this.

(Many thanks to Sara Hagerty, author of Every Bitter Thing is Sweet, for teaching me to pray this way. I've read this book four times in the last month. I truly cannot recommend it enough. A truly personal story, written with eloquence and exquisite grace, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet begs the reader to deeply ponder how she really sees God and then to contemplate how God sees her. While it is a story of infertility and delayed dreams and adoption, it's more than that. It's the story of leaning hard into God and being surprised to find Him enveloping and intimately knowing and loving each of us. it's about finding out that God is good to me. Everyone should read it.)

Oh, and I'm heading back to Charlottesville again. Prayers most definitely appreciated. 

The Grim Reality of Betrayal

There is so much in the Gospel of the days leading to the Crucifixion that makes me squirm. When I read it, and I put myself in the scene, I wonder what I would have done. Would I have stayed awake in the Garden of Gethsamane? I’d like to think so, but I know well all the times I’ve fallen asleep, both figuratively and literally. At every turn, in the account of those last hours, there is the betrayal of Jesus’ closest friends. 

Judas is the ultimate betrayer. With a kiss, he handed his friend over to the enemy. He knew how his betrayal would hurt Jesus. He gave his assent to that kind of pain. Still he did it. Christ knew that Judas would betray Him, and He chose to be betrayed. With Judas’ kiss, Jesus allowed Himself to enter into the pain of every one of us who has ever been betrayed by a dear and trusted friend. Where to turn when someone we love betrays a promise or a vow or our trust? Turn to Christ, who knows the anguish of that particular pain. See Him walk unflinchingly in its reality. 

Christ had the power to have the earth open up beneath Judas and his conspirators and make it all go away. He chose to stand and be delivered unto them instead. Moreover, He used Judas as an instrument to complete the work He’d come to do. God redeems betrayal. God can use the times we are betrayed to bring about His greatest good.

Then there’s Peter. When I read the account of Peter’s denial of Jesus, I literally feel that awful feeling in my stomach that creeps up into my throat and makes my face flush with shame. He was so close to Christ. He had just promised never to deny Him. And there he stood in the busy crowd, protesting that he didn’t know Jesus—not just once, but three times.

Three different times, Jesus’ best friend claimed he didn’t even know Him. The placement of this event in the Gospel and the literary drama surrounding those moments of emphatic disassociation lead me to believe that God thinks this moment is very important for us 2000 years later. It is pivotal, enduring Biblical literature, to be underlined and starred and pondered in our hearts. When we do that, we find that Christ is particularly tender toward those who have been betrayed. Clearly, He is also poignantly merciful toward those who betray.

Perhaps you are scanning your own memory now, thinking of any time you could have stood with Peter, lurking outside the courtyard, cowering behind a pillar and lying straight up about a friend. Nothing? What about the crowd that called for Barabbas? Were you in it? One day, were you faithfully walking alongside a friend as did all those people as Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of “Hosanna,” only to find yourself shouting “Barabbas” just a few days later? Perhaps you didn’t shout it. Maybe you were swept along in an online discussion and you just quietly clicked “Like,” nodding your assent as the crowd said things they’d likely never say in person. Or perhaps there was no crowd at all. Instead, there was just a fleeting comment to only one other person — a betrayal of a confidence, an offhand whispered bit of gossip. We betray one another. And every time we do it, we betray Christ.

Betrayal requires intimacy. We cannot be betrayed by someone unless we have made ourselves vulnerable by drawing near to them. Christ models for us the intimacy and the betrayal. He lets us see how much He loved His disciples, even though He knew they would deny Him. Peter was so faithful when he was close to Christ. When he separated himself, just a little bit, and believed himself to be anonymous in the crowd, he sinned. We know that his sin deeply grieved him. And we know that Christ forgave Peter and trusted him again. 

To get to Easter, we walk through the grim reality of betrayal. We see there that God calls us to repent of our own sins of betrayal and to forgive those who have betrayed us. Even as we forgive, we know that only Christ is the perfect friend. Only He is without blemish or blame in a relationship. He beckons us beyond the darkness of human failing to the hope and promise of Easter and to true friendship in Him.