New year, new grace

It’s a new year. New days. New breath. New grace.

I can hear my baby girl, struggling with a cold, snoring like a trucker in the room next door. It is truly remarkable how one so little can saw logs that loud. My husband just rolled over to blow his nose for about the twentieth time since crawling into bed. The monitor next to me flips on and off with the toddler’s coughs.

Our family is quite positively the definition of a mess.

And you see me write here about seeing grace heaped upon grace. And I need you to know that I write it so I remember it. So I see it. So I can train my eyes and my ears and my heart to tune into that strain of grace that continually, though often imperceptibly, flows throughout daily life.

I need the training because this life is mundane and messy and sometimes snot filled and more often than not I find myself counting the minutes til bedtime.

I found myself there tonight. The two year old was hyper with a side of whiny bordering on bouncing off the walls. The baby was snotty and fussy and bleary eyed. The husband looked like he might collapse at any moment. And due to a foolish decision to stay up past one the previous night and a two year old alarm clock stubbornly set for 6:20am I was exhausted. And just done. Done wiping noses and answering questions and cajoling one more bite. And I wistfully looked at the clock willing it towards that magical hour of children’s bedtimes.

But that is where I’m so thankful for the hard refining fires of this past year. For the burning and the hammering and the revealing of the self pity…of the self. Of the hard parts that refuse to recognize the grace in front of me. And there are markers. Markers that even on snot filled days like these send me searching for grace and struggling for praise.

Today it was a bookmark. Not the bookmarks of yesteryear, but the modern type saved with a click for ease of browsing back. A forgotten bookmark, saved at some 3am hour just days before going to Seattle to await Miss Arabella. I awoke in a panic realizing I had nothing to bury my daughter in. I know it is perhaps not of great significance, but my momma’s heart wanted to lay her to rest in something beautiful. And so a frantic search in the middle of the night. How does one search for a last dress for a babe not met? And then I stumbled upon a ministry that sews gowns for just such an occasion out of donated wedding dresses. And they ship them overnight to grieving parents free of charge. And so I bookmarked that page, thankful for the peace of mind it gave. Thankful that someone at sometime realized how much such a ministry was needed. My girl would have a beautiful homecoming dress. But I didn’t have to dampen hope by purchasing it. It could wait. There would be time.

I thought about that tonight. That and the conversation with my husband at the Ronald McDonald house, trying to decide what the one thing we would dress our daughter in in the brief moments we held her…snugly jammies? The sweet dress we purchased for her after the most optimistic appointment? An outfit her sister wore in the hospital?

We never came to a conclusion. I take that back. We concluded it would be an in the moment decision. And I tear up now once again in thankfulness that we never faced that decision.

And all of a sudden, pulling off another poop soaked onesie this afternoon, to be scrubbed and tossed into the umpteenth load of laundry for the week – a load filled with numerous outfits worn and discarded, is full of grace instead of annoyance.

Do you see it? Do you see how grace ever lingers below the surface? Below the mist and distractions and selfish lens of this world? Is there anyone else out there with me fighting the fog, peering hard to hear, to see, that strand of grace? And when you see it…oh dear friends, when you see it, does it not make worship flow truer and deeper?

And so yes, in the midst of a new year begun to a chorus of coughs, snores and sniffles…even in this messy chorus there is truly grace, would I but have eyes to see it.

Fight on dear friends – and help me to keep fighting. Fight for that ever sharpening vision. Fight until the day the veil is removed and all is clear. Will not the grace poured out on us be absolutely astounding that day?