I am thankful. Truly thankful for the grace.
Grace that I shunned for years…because I did not choose to claim it in full.
But without the grace, who was my God in the twenty-three years I journeyed with Jesus … yet never fully unwrapped His grace?
My God was I AM, the God who swept into my life and clothed me in His grace and mercy, adopted me as His, despite who I was or what I had done. My heart embraced this knowledge, my head could not fathom.
He was my God, who cut through all my junk and called me, “saint”.
Whew. I wouldn’t.
He was my God who gave me my first born son and taught me what it meant to love with an agape love, to love without self, to abandon everything to pure nurture … simply because His love oozes.
He was my God, who blessed me with another son and confronted me with my own pride, who filled me with a love that overflows beyond what others think of me. He gave me a son who taught me a love that is far deeper than my own reputation.
He was the God who stuck by me, after emergency rooms and hospital stays and evals and diagnoses and deep, tear-filled conversations with my husband that it was just hard; too hard to have another child and do this again. He was the God who walked in with me to the women’s shelter as I gave away all my infant-things of clothing and carriers and tools, and smiled on me.
He was the God who bestowed Psalm 37.4 – the intense longing – deep in the womb before I even packed all the infant things into my car. He was the God who knew the desire of my heart and gave us a sweet girl with a beautiful, tender spirit, and closed the circle in our family.
He was the God who encouraged me with His Light during long nights of work, as He helped us tuck little ones in and then filled me with His presence until dawn broke through.
He was the God who placed me in community, a healthy, vibrant community of others whose hearts were sold out to Him to help me grow into the grace that didn’t seem to quite fit me.
He was the God, the third cord in the strand in my marriage, who wove us together to press on, no matter what.
He was the God who slipped in behind the wheel with me as I tearfully said good-byes to the proximity of very much loved family and deep-rooted friends, good-byes to the immediate energy of the city that I thought would always be next to me and good-byes to the beauty of the Hudson Valley, NY. He was the God who drove with this mom, three teens and dog to a new life to join my husband, seven hundred twenty-five miles from where we ever thought we’d be, because it was His will, and He is good.
He IS the God who watches over me as I sleep, wakes me in my mornings, sings over me, and extravagantly loves me. He is the God who calls me holy in His grace.
Scripture reassures me, my head and heart embrace it.
For this I am thankful.
He is I AM.
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. Ephesians 1.3-6