Grace

She’d been in bed for half an hour, chatting and singing and dancing and hosting the usual evening soiree she has every night with her baby dolls.  I’d hugged him good-night, told him to sleep well, reminded him we’d be up early for his sixth grade Bible study in the morning, and sent him off to bed as well.  There were no more emails to answer or phone calls to make.  The laundry was going and the dishwasher set to run. 


With the duties of the day complete, I sat down in the leather chair with my laptop and invited the puppy up to snuggle beside me.  (I know you’ve just fallen out of your own chair at the thought of OCD me allowing a dog on the furniture, but just so we’re clear, it’s the only piece of furniture she’s allowed on, it’s leather so I can easily clean it, and there is a huge blanket covering the seat so she’s not even really touching it.  I know.  What can I say – it happened when I was recovering from my surgery last year and needed her warmth while watching hours on end of HGTV, and you know what they say about teaching an old dog new tricks?  That saying is spot on, my friends, and it’s been her chair ever since). 


I opened Ann Voskamp’s blog, attempted to make sense of the prose turned poetry she pours daily into my soul.  Sometimes, I think she’s writing to me, though I know it isn’t true.  Her words, in all their backwards, reversed order beauty, offer exactly the reminders I shouldn’t need, but do.

Her post that night was about kids and fame and the insatiable need for attention epidemic that’s currently sweeping our land, and how funny, I thought.  I just wrote a little something about that myself.  I need to meet this woman one day.  I think we’d be fast friends.

I didn’t hear anything unusual upstairs.  He was going to the bathroom, brushing his teeth.  Doing the things he always does when I send him up to bed each night – stalling tactics, if I’m honest, because he never spends that much time on his teeth in the mornings.  

It drifted down slowly, floating around me like a cloud.  It took me a second to realize what it was, and when I did, the words on the screen in front of me blurred into nothing.  I breathed in, deep and long and full, and the weight of it all lifted right off my heart.  

The tears spilled over, the screen now just a mass of swirling colors as I took another breath, drawing it in, allowing it to fill the emptiness.

He had sprayed his cologne.  He had sprayed it again, finally, after days and weeks that seemed so heavy with the guilt of my mistake, and I know it’s ridiculous to read anything into an eleven-year-old boy putting cologne on.  I know he hasn’t forgotten and neither have I.  


Still.   


That scent . . . .


It smelled like forgiveness to me. 

Turn on the Light

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately, and the words just haven’t come.  That Lent project of mine seems so far in the past – the days when I could find gratitude around every corner.  Turns out, when you’re searching for things that make you feel thankful, the world seems full of those things.  You feel thankful.  But when you stop looking, the gratitude is no longer so easily found.  And the thankfulness?  Well, it begins to wane as many of those things you once counted as blessings begin to bear down more like burdens.

It’s when I’m in the dark that I realize how far I have to go.  When life is hard and everything feels like work and I doubt and fear and dread.  That’s when I understand the true state of my soul.  That’s when all signs point to the fact that I still don’t look anything like Jesus. 

He’s in there somewhere.  Buried deep among my discontent, he sits patiently waiting for me to look past my selfish mess and see him reaching for me.  Every so often, I acknowledge that he’s calling my name, and I rush towards him, full of eagerness for our reunion.  But the connection is brief.  I’m like a child who races towards her father when he shows up at the park, only to give him a quick hug before running off again, free to go and do and be as she pleases.

I know I should linger in his presence.  He is the only one who can provide the comfort I seek.  And yet, I search for it in anything . . . in everything else . . . and then act surprised when there is no comfort to be found.

There will always be dark places in our lives, and dark is difficult .  It’s disorienting and dangerous and it makes us feel so alone.  Just imagine being in a completely dark room – nothing but blackness all around.  You can’t even see what’s right in front of you.  You’re scared and you’re stuck and there seems to be no hope at all.  Now, think about what the flame of even one small candle brings to that dark place.  With a single spark, physical light enters your surroundings.  It makes the darkness recede, and suddenly, you have knowledge and understanding.

Jesus is light.

When life is dark, He is the one who illuminates what is real and shows us the way.  We just have to remember to look for the light.

I stopped looking.  That little Lent project of mine – the channeling my inner Ann Voskamp and counting blessings each and every day – it ended when Easter came.  I celebrated the resurrection – the single greatest reason for hope - and then I stopped looking for reasons to be thankful. 

Man I have SUCH a long way to go.

You see, when I don’t focus on the source of light, all I see is dark.  When I don’t let the light of the world bring clarity and truth that point me in the right direction, I end up in stumbling through blackness.

Light overcomes darkness.

Jesus overcame death.

If I walk towards the light . . . if I run to Jesus . . . I will find my way.  I will find the comfort and peace and freedom I’m looking for.  The dark will disappear and I will be thankful again.