What to take from pain

The last 5 weeks have been rough.
Painful. At times debilitating. Frustrating. Expensive.
It's often hard to see the forest for the trees.
It's often hard to see the beauty in the ashes.
It's often hard to remember that brokenness is a season, an opportunity, a blessing.

But until that holy shift in perspective comes, it just feels like a gloomy day; a day where the sun is hiding and the light has gone away.

I am a sort-of runner. I say sort of because if there was a different "thing" I could do that would reap the same benefits for the same cost (ie. free), then I would probably do that instead. I don't love running per say. I'm more of a team sport kind of person. But I have discovered running is good for my mental health as well as my physical health...mostly.

I am a sort-of soccer player. I say sort of because I really love soccer, but I'm not terribly talented at it. I can hold my own on the turf, and I'm smart so I make up for my lack of skill with an overabundance of firing synapses. I play on a team where the average age is probably 40 so none of us are gonna be world class players--ever. But we have fun and it's good exercise and I like the folks I play with.

Combine the two, plus a 38 year old body, and sometimes that body doesn't cooperate like it did a decade ago. Thus my last 5 weeks.

It was my own fault. I knew my lower back wasn't right. There was pain for quite a few weeks and that pain wasn't really going away and every time I played, I aggravated an already aggravated issue. I let the issue compound itself and build into and upon itself until one game, my back told me, in no uncertain manner, that I was done. DONE.

I had crazy pain. Pain that I might just equate to labor pain. It was horrible. And awful. And excruciating. And constant.

I was sad. To put it mildly.

And as I sought treatment for that issue, I realized that while I was relatively fit, parts of my body had been sorely neglected and were now sending that message in quite an unfriendly manner. The realigning of my lower back sent my hip flexors into a revolt against the rest of my lower body. For those anatomy buffs, the hip flexor (aka the psoas) I've learned connects to the interior of some of those lower back vertebrae so when you start moving those, then the hip flexors resist, which pulls on the hips which irritates the IT band which then irritates some other muscles. It's super awesome. So these last weeks have played out like some crazy dramedy (you know-- drama plus comedy) which should've been cancelled before it began. I say dramedy because pain is drama. There's no getting around that. But to an outsider who's watching me slowly get in and out of my car, it's probably pretty funny.

I have come to have a great appreciation for how God has designed us. And I have also come to realize that fixing one issue often peels back the veil on several other issues. Or deeper issues.

So it goes with our souls. We might find ourselves dealing with fear and then we find ourselves dealing with anxiety and avoidance and denial and faith because of the fear. It's never just about the one thing. God sees us holistically so He also deals with us holistically. He peels back the layers of our hidden selves to see what we deem unseemly.

He plucks those unseemly bits like so many weeds and He doesn't mess around. When we surrender, He goes for the gusto and yanks the whole root out so that that weed is good and gone. But what's left is a raw and gaping hole where all that weed used to be. In His goodness, He doesn't leave us to our own devices because we'd go right back and fill that hole up with the first thing we could find that might sort-of fit. Instead, God offers us the very essence of Himself, His goodness, His grace, His love and as His grace flows down, those holes are filled with the stuff of holiness and grace. God straight up sanctifies those holes and what grows from the beauty He plants are vines laden with abundant fruit.

When I ignore my brokenness, my pain, my fear and try to bury it, the issue only gets worse and again, it becomes a mess derived of my own creation. Pretending something isn't there is a sort of perverted creating because it doesn't go away and the act of ignoring gives permission for that "thing" to then become.

Procrastination in doing, in surrendering, in addressing an injury does not speed healing. It negates healing. Denial of an injury does not promote healing. It prevents healing.
It doesn't really matter what the injury is or where the injury is.
And if 'injury' is too literal for you, replace it with 'brokenness.' That works, too.

I've learned some important lessons these last 5 weeks:

Embracing the pain and breathing through the pain help immensely with perspective. It's a season. If I'd addressed it earlier, the season might have been much shorter, but there are consequences for procrastination and denial. Thus the importance of breathing.

Rest is good. Rest promotes healing. Inside and out. Body and soul. While forced rest isn't always what we might order, I have found it's often what He orders when we've ignored the signs and symptoms for too long.

Jesus is faithful. Even when I don't understand all the ways my body freaks out, I can hold fast to the knowledge that He knows exactly what's not right since He knit me together. The Creator knows which offers me some peace when I don't know.

Broken things take time to un-break. I can't say that I'm back to fighting form yet. I'm better than I was a week ago and for that I'm grateful. But since I didn't break in a day but over a span of months, it's unrealistic to think that I can be put back together in a week or two. Healing takes time. (I know, you're probably saying "Duh, I know that" but this mama apparently forgets these simple truths sometimes!).

Little victories lead to big victories. I have to celebrate the small triumphs so I can keep my head, keep my peace, keep my wits. And the accumulation of small victories leads to those bigger victories that become stones of remembrance in a season where it's not just about the pain, which I'd like to forget, but about how Jesus met me right there in the middle of it.

Grace always Rises,
Jamie

Hey there, I'm linked up today with some lovely ladies: Holley Gerth at Coffee for your Heart, and Jennifer Dukes Lee at #TellHisStory.

When Grace Flows Down

 It was a hard Saturday.

There was an issue with the Eldest.

More specifically, with her room. 

Or rather all the stuff in her room that manages, in a very short time period, to unearth itself from where her parents have shown her to put it and to migrate to some other location that's not GPS accessible.
Her room is rough.

She couldn't find her soccer jersey.

Or her shorts.

And all the places where those items should be kept did not contain those items.

And all the other possible and impossible locations did not contain those items either.

I am a master at finding lost things.  (ALL mamas are master lost-thing finders. Amen?!)
And I was worried. And that worry quickly translated to frustration because in the process of looking for her uniform, I found a plethora of other things in unapproved locations.
(Read: Her room was a hot mess.)

So I let her know I was frustrated in a very loud and frustrated way. 

Perhaps not one of my finer mama moments, but there was no doubt as to my message and we have had versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 of this conversation in the last several weeks so I felt my message needed to be communicated in a way she really couldn't misunderstand.

She was to stay in her room and clean it. Every inch, every drawer, every surface.

I removed my frustrated self from her room and up to my room so I could breathe.

She cried. 

And while I was practicing my breathing, I had a grace epiphany.
And I'm finding these grace epiphanies happen not because my children need grace, 
though they do, but because I desperately need grace, and when I need it most is when I'm having a not-so-fine-need-to-practice-my-breathing mama moment.
And this was definitely one of those moments.

I needed to have a moment with the Eldest and make this a different kind of lesson where perhaps there could be a different, more graceful, message that maybe would settle in her deep.
And one which would settle deep in my heart.

The Eldest came upstairs, cheeks splotchy, eyes puffy.

"Mama, I'm sorry for my room."
Her voice hitched on the last word and her eyes welled up again.

I held her and breathed Holy Spirit words that weren't my words because when they left my mouth,
I realized they were meant for me, too.

"Sweet girl, I love you. I am frustrated with what you did. With how you've been keeping your room. I am not frustrated with who you are. I love who you are and I know sometimes my frustration is not always nice and it might seem like I'm frustrated with who you are."
I laid my hand on her heart, really maybe it was my own heart, too.

"I love who you are. I'm frustrated with what you do. I always love you. Does that make sense?"

She nodded her head, sighed, and spent a great majority of the day purging her room.
And doing it with a joyful heart.

And I even helped.

And those words settled in, are still settling in, somewhere deep in me, too. 

I admit that I sometimes show great impatience with the Eldest.
And I start to see her through the lens of my frustration and my impatience.
I lose sight of who she is and 

that who she is cannot be the sum of what she does.

 I lose sight of what she needs because of who she is.

We are not what we do.

Oh sure, sometimes who we are dictates our choices and our words.

Sometimes what we do can determine what we become. 

But who we are, our identity, our core, our value, our worth, 
is not determined by the things we do.

God's love for me is not based on what I've done, what I'll do.
It's because of what He did.

It's because He calls me His Beloved.

He calls the Eldest His Beloved.

He calls you His Beloved.

As in He's in love with us.
And He wants us to BE LOVED.

That doesn't change.

Ever.

If His love for me was based on my behavior, I'd be sunk. I'd be lost and sad and hopeless.

I'm a child of the King and sadly, I don't always act like one.
The Eldest is a child of the King and I don't always parent her like one.

Many days I parent her according to what she does. Or doesn't do.

And instead of consistently parenting her in a way that reflects who she is and what she needs,
I'm reactive and not responsive. 

And it doesn't' mean I'm not disciplining her actions, but it means that my discipline must also nurture her soul because what's discipline without care, without thought, without nurture?
It's just rules and regulations. Legalism without grace.

She is so much more than what she does.
We all are.

When that Holy Spirit breath moved out of me, I saw my own actions, my own doings, my own rebellions, and how far off the mark I so often am. And how grateful I am God grants me grace after grace and doesn't give me what I deserve.

How often my actions or my words are the very opposite of who I am, of who He says I am.

And God still doesn't treat me according to what I might deserve.

He disciplines. Which means I might have consequences.

But He keeps covering me with grace.

He keeps loving me.

He keeps me.

Parenting children is all about grace.
How often I seem to forget that. Forget grace.

How different my Saturday might have been if I'd not been moved by a moment. 

Our day was transformed because it was moved by grace and not anger, grace instead of frustration.
My heart was moved because I gave up my parenting agenda in lieu of a much greater one.

 Because He offers me grace, I could offer her grace

And all that Holy Spirit grace carried me right up in rolling rivers of it.

Grace Always Rises,
Jamie

Hey there, I'm linked up today with some lovely ladies: Holley Gerth at Coffee for your Heart, and Jennifer Dukes Lee at #TellHisStory.

How to Love Big

So I went to pick up the girls from preschool and their teacher, Miss C, pulled me aside. Again. I always panic a little when this happens. These girls of mine are prone to doing crazy stuff that gets them in trouble that results in me being pulled aside and which creates an "issue" that I then have to address after I've worked all day with teenagers who seem to have lots of "issues." So I'm sure you agree when I say it's not my favorite when I pick up my kids and find I have to deal with more "issues."

I have to remind myself to breathe so my head doesn't straight up spin off my body.

But this time was different.

Miss C told me that Rye shared that she "loves Miss C so so much." And she knows that Miss C loves her "so so much" and Miss C gives her hugs and kisses to show how she loves Rye "so so much." And Rye, in turn, gives Miss C hugs and kisses to show she loves Miss C "so so much." And so they really love each other "so so much."

In addition, Miss C has a new baby grandson who visits often. He's adorable. And Rye is in love with Baby Zachary. And shares this every day: "Mama, I love my Baby Zachary. I got to give him his bottle today and I gave him sweet kisses on his head." And because Rye loves Baby Zachary so abundantly, yesterday, to the astonishment of both his mother and Miss C, apparently Baby Zachary, who's 4 months old, recognized Rye, smiled so big his eyes disappeared, and tried to reciprocate and give back some of those kisses to Rye in his sweet bouncy, baby way.

And Rye just keeps giving away all this love. Freely. Extravagantly. Abundantly.
And as extravagantly as she gives it away, it runs in great rivers right back to her sweet, gentle heart and then gushes over, and if you're standing close, you can't help but be soaked straight to your core in all this loveliness.

Her love is so much bigger than her little 4 1/2 year old body. She doesn't have any baggage to get in the way of big loving. There's no fear and there's no distress. There's only freedom and joy and gladness in her loving.

I wonder when we stop giving away extravagant love?
Is it that first time it returns void...not because something was incomplete about our love,
but because the one we wanted to receive it couldn't? or wouldn't?
Is it that first time it's ignored or rejected or thrown and trampled on?
Is it the second time, the third time?
Is there a statute of limitations on giving away our love?
Is it when that relationship hits a little too close to home or gets just a bit too messy or requires just a bit too much, then we pull back, or we get burned, and you know that saying, once bitten, twice shy....
Is it when it becomes somehow unseemly or awkward to grab a sweet sister and hug her tight, or hold her hand, or wipe her tears away?
Is it because in our heads we're making excuses about time and commitments and margin and again, time?
Is it because we are afraid to show our affection? To offer our care?
Is it because we are afraid of what people might think if we shower love like a spring rainstorm?

Have we stopped to wonder what Jesus might think?

Jesus loves us extravagantly. marvelously. wonderfully. beautifully. abundantly.
I could go on, but I would have to bust out the thesaurus to find the exact-perfect words.
I don't always live like I'm loved like this.
I don't always love others like I'm loved like this.

Rye does. Almost every day.
She's the first one to notice if you're sad.
She's the first one to comfort you if you have a boo-boo,
She's the first one to ask about your bruise or band-aid or scab.
She's the first one to snuggle.
She's the first one to cry big, sad, alligator tears.
She's the first one to give a big kiss and a bigger, tighter hug.
She wakes up and finds someone to snuggle with...me, the husband, K, the dog...someone.
She knows she's loved and she's not afraid to share it, show it, live it.
And sure, sometimes that affection turns ugly, messy, unfortunately so.
But it doesn't stop her from keeping on. Forging on. Hugging on. Loving on.
Rye loves big.

The Bible is filled with people who loved big. Who loved beyond themselves.
Despite the risks. Despite the costs. Despite the mess. 

Anything worth fighting for is going to cost us something. It's always going to cost us when people are in the mix. And people are what He's all about. So loving extravagantly, loving abundantly, loving beyond ourselves is also going to cost us something. Because loving people gets a little bit messy sometimes. I get a little bit messy sometimes. 

Yeah, it's easy to avoid entanglement--To avoid relationships so we can avoid the distress, yes, even the trouble, that relationships will ultimately bring us at one point or another. It's easy to live life numb. Boring, but easy. But that avoidance denies us the opportunity for gladness later on, denies us the opportunity to be used by Jesus, to see Jesus move, so we can come alive. So He can be made alive in us.

Here's a grace: The last time I checked, Jesus specializes in messy--David was a mess, Job was a mess, Saul was a mess, Abraham was a mess, Joseph was a mess. And that list marches on through the ticking of time. Straight down to me. And probably to you.
Jesus redeems messy people.
Jesus loves messy people.
Jesus uses messy people because they know they're a mess.

If I had to have all my ducks in a row before Jesus could love me, use me, save me...well, that would be ugly given my ducks are scattered to the far corners of several galaxies on an hourly basis. I would have no hope.

And yet, my mess is exactly what Jesus loves. Because there's lots of opportunity for Him to do what only He does: Be made perfect in all my weakness for all His glory. 

Jesus commands us to love others. Period. There's no disclaimers or stipulations on that love. He loves us. We love others. All in. All the time. And we know love is mostly a verb so yeah, we're gonna have to carve out time and space in all our busy and crazy and loud to do this Jesus-love thing.

We are called to community, to relationship, to a deep fellowship with others. You can only go deep if you, well, go deep. And I don't know about you, but the deeper I go into my own soul, the messier and stickier and more convoluted I seem to get. It's hard to invite some other poor sister-soul to take that journey with me believing that she would want to travel that crazy road, or more, that she would be safe on that crazy road with me. And yet, that's exactly what we're called to. And deep down, it's what we all crave: to know and to be known.

We're exhorted to accept this abiding invitation to live a deeper life alongside others so we're not traveling separate roads in isolation, but we're traveling them alongside others, intermingling and criss-crossing and weaving tapestries in stories and tears and laughter. We're building bridges between our crazy, criss-crossed roads so when I'm bumped or bruised or weary-worn, you just jaunt on over for a cup of coffee and walk for a bit on my road, sharing the journey with me, and I'll do the same for you. This is gladness and life is so much better this way.

But this is also hard. And scary. Very. Scary.
Because what if you don't like me?
What if how I feel about you isn't how you feel about me?
What if I pour into you all this love and you walk away? Or vice versa?
What if I share my hard with you and you shrug your shoulders and roll your eyes?
What if I risk it all, throw all my chips in, and they're the wrong color?

That's the risk with loving people with an extravagant kind of Jesus-love.
It's a fact that when we love much, it will hurt much. 
And we do it anyway.
Because there's gonna be that day, that person, that heart that feels exactly the same way about you as you do about her. There's gonna be that fullness made complete when all that loving sticks and grows and bears fruit. There's gonna be that celebration for a hard battle won, for a hard road traveled, for a hard heart broken. There's gonna be that moment when all that love floods back, rolling right through us, filling our cups right up to overflowing.

Aren't we all just waiting for someone to take that first step towards us?
We're all just kind of in a holding pattern..waiting for someone else to make the first move, to take the initiative in cultivating a relationship. Someone to indicate that she, maybe, wants to know me. Someone to make that first call. That first text. That first overture. That first invitation. So we're all just waiting. Looking around, looking up to the sky, looking down, avoiding eye contact, waiting.

And you know, next week we'll all still probably be waiting.

So what if we moved first?
What if we asked first, shared first, called first?

What if we loved first?
And we loved big.
And we didn't weigh the risks or calculate the odds. 
And we didn't love to get it back.
And we just went all in. 
And loved big because He loved us big first.

I woke up my sweet Rye this morning.
When I sat on the edge of her bed, she leaned up, grabbed me tight around my neck and pulled me into her so she could bury her nose in my neck.
When she let me go, she walked to her sister and wrapped her arms tight around K and kissed her right on her forehead. Then she went to brush her teeth.

All without a single word. Sometimes, loving big is speechless.

Maybe we should all wake up loving.
Extravagantly.
And big.

Grace always Rises,
Jamie

Hey there, I'm linked up today with some lovely ladies: Holley Gerth at Coffee for your Heart, Meredith Bernard, and Jennifer Dukes Lee at #TellHisStory.

When we hear Jesus at the corner of chaos...

There are some days where I would give just about anything for 10 minutes of silence.
No chatty-Kathy's chattering.
No inquisitive minds pondering the wonders of the universe.
No diva girl drama. Times three.
Just silence. Stillness.

Alas, it's a rare day when I get to sit and be still.

I'm sure you can relate.
There's not often time or space to be still.

be at peace.

maybe listen to Jesus.

And all this noise sometimes leaves quite a wake.
And so there's this mess, these crumbs and dishes and detritus from the last meal,
 overflowing from the counter to the table.

There's this mess, these thoughts and struggles and musings, overflowing from my head to my heart. 

Which makes the mess at my table seem, somehow, even more messy.
If that's even possible...

And there's not one, but three, baskets of spilling over laundry and a floor covered in remnants of some skyscraper they were building and my heart spills over with this need,
this desire for peace.

for contentment. 

for something elusive and hard to articulate.

And my heart's still a mess.
Which isn't really a surprise to me.
Cuz this passel of kids I've got is not quiet about, well, about anything.
They've got wars to fight and snacks to forage and worlds to build and dolls to dress.
And so in this world they've created, their mess also becomes my mess.
Because, wonderfully, someone has to play peacemaker and nursemaid and fashion coordinator and general contractor. And since I took on this once-in-a-lifetime-job a while ago, that someone is me.
And this glorious mess goes on...

 Then strangely, wonderfully, I find myself in this spot of space. 

And I sit.

And just breathe.

And I hear Him.

And granted, I'm not sure what He says is really what I want to hear--
Because it's a bit uncomfortable and it means I gotta clean out that metaphorical junk drawer...all of 'em.

And unfortunately for me, housecleaning has never been my favorite or my forte.

And I'm not talking about the one I live in,

but the one He lives in.

But I hear Him.

When it's quiet. 

When I'm quiet.

And I realize something somewhat startling:

I heard Him in the noise and the mess and the chaos--

But there was no space to listen.
His voice was drowned out by all the other little voices and noises and needs.

I think my children are like this, too. They hear but there's so much internal noise and external chaos that they can't listen. Or they don't listen.

So when I want the undivided attention of one of my small people, I gently grasp her face between my palms, and steer her eyes to look into mine. 

You know how we do this: 

I get right down on my knees there so there's no doubt that it's this person I am talking to, these eyes I want to gaze into, this heart I want to speak into.

Because what I need to say is not just important-- It's really important.  I have learned that while she might hear me, she doesn't always listen and so the act of holding that sweet face and catching her eyes with mine--she has space to listen because I've stopped her chaos.

I think sometimes Jesus does that with us.

That's what I think stillness does--It's Jesus grabbing our face so carefully, so tenderly and He tilts our chin up so His eyes can meet our eyes so we listen, not just with our ears, but with our hearts.
Our offering of time and space allows Jesus the opportunity to stop our chaos.

So we get it.

So we get Him.

And in that space, in that stillness, when He has our undivided attention, we also have His.

Sometimes I think I'm missing it.

I don't really know what it is...but it's like there's this thing that is stirring in my heart--like there's more.

Something else I'm supposed to be stepping into but I don't know what it is or how to go about it and I'm a bit afraid of how to go about it and thus the mess.

And my contribution has not been time and space, 

but discontent and trying and failing to figure it out on my own.
I know. Silly me.

And in this time and space where Jesus has my undivided attention, there's this realization that there's a lot of stuff I have to let go of that stands between whatever it is that He has and where I'm at. And the letting go of all this stuff is maybe not my favorite thing--thus the need for some housecleaning--but I know...
I just know that I can't cling to both.
There's no room for His stuff, the stuff of the Kingdom, the eternal stuff,
if I'm clinging to my small and petty stuff.

Intimacy with Jesus means time and space and then it means obedience to whatever He speaks into that time and space.

Surrendering to His stuff means that I have to let it all go and go all in.
I can't keep holding my stuff and expect that Jesus can give me His stuff.
There's simply no room in my heart for both because a heart can't serve two masters.
And frankly, my chaotic stuff stands in conflict to His holy stuff.
  But if I let go, then there's this room, this space, this landing strip deep in my soul
for the holy stuff of Jesus to occupy.
 All my stuff just clutters up the landscape.

And I'll be frank, again, sometimes this sacrifice, this surrender of my stuff is really hard. The kind of hard that maybe, some days, when I'm being super honest with myself, I'd rather not ponder or do. The kind of hard that is easy to set aside and wait for another, somewhat more convenient day which never comes
and thus I perpetuate my own messiness.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest battles in the Christian walk:
The flesh versus the Holy.
What I want versus what Jesus wants.
My dirty, tattered rags for His holy, clean ones.

But, my friends, here's the grace:
While Jesus calls us to let go, to sacrifice our stuff,
 He has never asked us to do that alone, on our own.
He has promised to walk that hard road with us, to help us navigate the deep waters where His grace abounds all the more, to shelter us when our battle rages and batters, to shield us when we're weary and overwhelmed, and to lead us to still, quiet waters where He can restore us.

When it gets really hard and when my flesh wants to grab right back onto all my chaos, He's there to gently frame my face with His loving hands and redirect my gaze to Him.

And that something elusive for which my heart is yearning:
I just have to be obedient to do the next thing, to take the next step, to let go of the next thing, to keep carving out time and space for Jesus to whisper to my heart, and then listen.

Grace always Rises,
Jamie

Psst: I'm linking up today with an inspirational lady, Holley Gerth, at Coffee for Your Heart.

When my words bit me in the bum...

This morning my wild child, who also shares the husband's propensity for meticulousness (we lesser beings refer to this particular propensity as anal retentiveness), was sitting on her floor, carefully arranging her leggings just so over her socks with all the precision and dexterity of a brain surgeon.

And I'm sitting at the end of her bed, watching. Waiting. Waiting some more.
It's a good morning so far:
No temper tantrums.
No wardrobe malfunctions.
No lost shoes. Or lost minds.
No spills, flips, or double-flips.

And well, that wild child peers up at me, flashes me her toothless little grin, and with a little sass says, "Mama, am I killing you?"

I laugh without really understanding what, exactly, I'm laughing at. Almost like a courtesy laugh. And then her words hit me. Like rocks shattering the glassy surface of my peaceful pond.

I pause in shock. To be sure I heard her correctly, I ask her to repeat herself. (Aren't we mamas sometimes gluttons for punishment; like the first time wasn't enough so we ask for more?)

"Mama, am I killing you right now?" And her inflection is different and she glances sideways to those nimble fingers fixing a legging.

Yep. That, quite unfortunately, is what I thought she said.
And I'm both impressed by her wit and mortified by it.

Because I'm guilty of saying those exact words in the throes of my exasperation. When such a situation doesn't warrant my own temper tantrum (Really, does any situation warrant my own temper tantrum? But that is for another day.) and the antics are somewhat mischievous and so in an attempt to cast some levity, I say, "K, you're killing me right now," in that dry, understated, sarcastic way that we've all heard before, perhaps even used before.

And when I say that to her, I don't mean anything derogatory by it. And therein lies the heart of the issue. Just because we don't mean anything by a word we say doesn't mean that there isn't some sort of transaction that takes place. Because there's always a transaction.

I'm not quite sure if I should be utterly appalled by these words being thrown back at me by my four year old, or humbled because my words have so much more power, so much more impact, than I ever thought--and I'll be honest, I'm all about my words.

And it's the words that we don't think matter, which matter far too much. It's the words tossed carelessly through the air, the words sarcastically spewed, the words that are so many darts at one single balloon that matter. the. most.

It's the words we don't think twice about until the day they echo back to us and that echo is not sweet.

But here's the flip side: Sometimes it's the words we leave unsaid, the words which we hold back from saying because we are hurt or prideful or too busy or too fearful.  It's the words that carry healing and grace and love and kindness that sometimes we never say. It's the words that could be "a honeycomb, sweet to the soul" (Prov. 16:24) that we sometimes neglect to say, but if we did, they would rock someone's world. In a good way.

When I think of all the things I've said...words that have risen from some impatient, frustrated, antagonistic place within me--yes, my own brokenness--which have latched on to little minds and little hearts, I get a little bit sad. Like I wish in those moments when the frazzled, weary, frustrated minutes are running through my fingers and my blood pressure rises for all the whirlwind of needing little bodies frantically swirling around me, I wish could just tell myself to stop and breathe. Breathe deeply.

And in the breathing and the being, I can remember that all of this whirling and swirling is just that--whirling and swirling--and I don't need to be frantically trying to catch these little girls...I just need to stop and be still and take a deep breath so I can grab hold of Jesus who's my Rock and can't be moved. And then maybe I could say something gracious instead of caustic. Because when I grab on to Grace instead of angst, my perspective shifts like tumblers in a lock that's been moved with the right Key and then offering grace becomes the byproduct of grabbing hold of the best thing.

But this grabbing on to grace thing is not something I've been good at. There's nothing like your own child reflecting an image that isn't the image you were trying for, looking for, hoping for, to make you eat a bit of humble pie.

But here's a grace, and I'll count it and I'll let it settle down into those shadowy places. The depth and breadth of my girls' unconditional love, despite my shortcomings and failings and mistakes, is nothing short of a miracle. And pure grace. Because there are days, moments, when I get exactly what I don't deserve. There are probably many more moments than I would care to remember where I am not careful or graceful, moments when I speak short and hard and brusque, and minutes later, my slate is wiped clean and they offer hugs and kisses and cuddles--grace. unmeasured.

They don't hold my shortcomings against me.
They don't hold up my failures for the world to see.
They don't throw my mistakes back in my face. At least on purpose.

They just offer grace without even knowing that's what they offer. They give away their kisses and hugs as though it's endless currency. And in the eyes of the Father, it's the only currency. And it's value is only acknowledged in the giving. The giving away dictates the value. No one gets to hoard grace and have it count for something. The only way grace works is by the giving of it and the receiving of it. 

On those occasions when the smart, crafty mind of a four year old uses my words to remind me of all this, I'm reminded of how God can work ALL things for good, even something like my careless mouth.

Her words were funny--I'm finding a lot of things four year olds say are funny--but then they weren't funny. I'm not sure that's what I want my little people to reflect. I'm not sure that's what I want them to get from me. I'm not saying that I don't appreciate a bit of humor, because I do; but in this instance, I was convicted of how much power and influence I have as a mama over my kids. How closely their little eyes are watching, how carefully their little ears are listening, how honestly their little mouths are repeating. And there's this opportunity to seize the moment to draw my kids closer to Jesus if I would just hang on, press on, carry on.

It makes me want to be more. More patient. More gracious. More careful. But not just to be more, but to be more like the Father. To be more like Him so my kids will see Him in me. So that the next time K throws my words back, maybe, just maybe, they're full of the heart of Jesus.

Tomorrow's a new day. To practice. To be thoughtful. To remember.
His mercies are new for me tomorrow.
And that's another grace to be counted.

Grace always Rises,
Jamie