Grace…
is the unexplainable hope
that washes away
the accusing whispers that dance in the darkness
and hide behind the mirror
and say, “You need to be thinner
and thinner
and thinner.”
Grace…
is the light that calls you
toward something so good that you’re scared to trust it.
You might even ignore it at first,
thinking it’s not for you.
Instead,
you try to get better
and fix things on your own.
You try to be strong.
Confident.
Perfect.
But hours of 3:00 a.m. sit-ups,
calorie counting,
dieting,
scrutinizing,
and hiding,
will make a person fall.
Yet Grace…
is the mighty hand that will catch you
and promise you
that you don’t have to be
perfect.
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Last year, my son went through a phase of independence. At just seven years old, he no longer wanted me hugging him around his friends, calling him buddy, or kissing him when I dropped him off places.
But during that phase, one day as I was writing at the kitchen table, he did something that surprised me.
Out of the blue, he walked over and climbed onto my lap.
At first, I thought maybe he was hurt or upset about something.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He smiled.
Then he wrapped his arms around my neck, rested his head on my shoulder, and hugged me.
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A while ago, my husband got a new phone system in our house that made working from home easier for him. One of the features of the system was that the phones intercomed each other–a convenient thing when you needed to ask a quick question from upstairs or downstairs and didn’t want to yell.
My daughter thought it was a great feature too and had fun calling from room to room.
Especially at bed-time.
One night, literally a minute after we’d put the kids to bed, we heard the intercom…
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I picked up the phone.
“Mommy?” My daughter said.
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I sat there in a room filled with people, my heart pounding.
I was about to share my story of struggling with an eating disorder in college with a few dozen teenagers. I was a mentor to teen moms through Youth for Christ at the time, and I had volunteered to speak that night.
So why was I nervous?
I knew that I was meant to talk about what I’d gone through. Here was a room full of girls, each facing their own challenges, and I wanted them to know they weren’t alone. I wanted them to know that we all go through difficulties, even if our situations are different.
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I was saying prayers with my daughter the other night, when she said…
“Dear Lord,
Please help me to stop cracking my knuckles.”
She paused for a minute, then added,
“I know I can pray all I want, God, but if I don’t do my part, it’s not going to happen. So please help me to do my part too.”
Her prayer reminded me of that saying…
Pray like everything depends on God, then act like everything depends on you.
And I think it’s true. We can cry out to God for help in any area of our lives—and we should—but if we don’t do our part to make changes or act on what we are needing help with, we will likely be frustrated with the results.
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One of my favorite verses in the Bible is Matthew 6:25-34…
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
And why do you worry about clothes?
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The other day, I was jotting down some notes in a notebook, when I turned the page and saw a little drawing from my daughter– a happy face with an “I love you” next to it. It was a cute surprise, and it made me smile.
It also made me pause and be grateful for the other little surprises–the little gifts–in my life. Sometimes, I go about my day and take for granted those gifts—a hug from my daughter, hearing my son laugh, spending time watching a movie with my husband, getting a card from a friend, or even finding a good parking space at the store.
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The other day, as I was driving home, I came upon a detour in the road. I followed the orange signs, winding around a neighborhood I wasn’t familiar with, only to end up a few minutes later in the same spot I’d started.
I shook my head, sure I’d done something wrong, and headed into the detour again.
And ended up in the same place again.
I couldn’t figure it out. Could detour signs really be wrong, or was it me?
I watched other cars and realized that some of them were turning left instead of right like the sign said.
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