Grace

It's May in Texas.  Ordinarily, the temperatures are in the high 90's and our five month streak of heat induced misery begins.  However, the last two days have been gray, rainy and cool.  It's my most favorite weather because I feel the most like me.  But the rain itself has felt like a gift.

Sometimes I wonder why God sends it.  Why does He choose to send us water to drink, to nourish and strengthen our lands, and to give us relief from the hot sun?  Why does He bless us? What did we do to deserve it?


The rains have passed for now and the sun is shining today.   It's a beautiful morning and I feel His call on my heart to enjoy it's beauty rather than be stuck inside with responsibility and obligation and duty.  Perhaps the day will allow for a walk and a few precious moments to steal away just for myself.

But the rain, the sunshine in all of it's glory, the unexpected May breeze - makes me feel profoundly thankful for grace today.  Grace - being given something that we don't deserve.  Grace - a completely unmerited gift.  And where would we be without it? 

For me, it's easy to think of those who have known and loved me well over the years who have extended to me measure upon measure of grace. Their faces come to mind and my eyes brim with tears for how they have shown grace and how it has impacted my story.

A second chance.  A third chance.  A forty-seventh chance. Tears of sorrow instead of anger.  Understanding eyes in place of judgemental, condescending ones.  Lavish gifts in the midst of my mess.  Life instead of death.

Grace has changed my life.

I've been thinking about where grace feels hard though.  Where it doesn't want to fit.  When I've been slow to extend it and find it in my heart for someone else.  Grace has never been my natural inclination.  Maybe we aren't born with the ability to give it to others.  Perhaps it has to be learned because someone had to show it to us. 

It seems as though when you've experienced much of grace, slowly over time it becomes a part of who you are.  How you live and love others, how you speak, what your relationships look like, how you make decisions. 

And this grace - invented, authored, and thought up by God Himself - it is forever woven in to my story.  All that I've been shown and given, not just by God, but by through others who have chosen to love me well, enables me to impact someone else's life and story too.

My hope is that grace can come with more ease. My hope is that I will reach for grace when I am hurt or wounded or even disappointed by someone.  My hope is that someone can experience God's love, the hope of Christ because I have shown them grace.

I so deeply desire to be a woman full of grace.