Grace...for me

Awoke this morning to a throbbing pain running down my right arm.  For nearly four hours my baby lay on that arm resting after a crying fit in the night.  I stumbled into the kitchen to find my husband and older two boys looking frantically for Fireball the Elf who had hidden somewhere in plain view yet out of sight. Amid the morning chaos, there was still breakfast to be prepared and served, boys to be dressed and groomed, lunch to be packed for my husband and then, well, me.

I never pictured my life to look quite like this.  There are days I wonder what life would have been like if things had been different.  What if I hadn't married?  What if we had never been blessed with children of our own? What if I didn't even live in this country? What if, what if, what if?  Well, I know this much.  I can't live in the what if! I have to live fully right where I am, right now.  Happiness is circumstantial.  It comes and goes...sometimes day by day, sometimes moment by moment.  Joy is based on relationship.  Relationship with Christ...alone.  No other way, no other one.

Some days are like this:

Doors slam.

Boys scream.

The television blares way too loud.

And others go more like this:

The hugs flow freely. 

The boys share.

Music fills the house. 

Either way, I have a choice. One, a choice to live in the fleeting.  The what if moments.  The negative thoughts.  To choose self. Two, a choice to live in the joy.  To see the roses budding in early December.  To watch my boys grow in grace together.  To choose life...and really live!

Grace.  It was flowed unstoppable, uncontainable in my life.  It has taken joy in unlovely circumstances to make me realize this grace is for me.  Grace not to conceal. It is to cleanse.  Grace not from me.  It is to me, for me.  Grace not to cover. It is to calm all my fears. Grace that brings hope, brings joy in abundance.

Today I choose grace.  Life giving, soul cleansing, joy providing Grace. As a woman, a wife, a mother.  Grace that allows me to sow the seed of grace to those around me.  Will you accept grace today?  In the imperfect, fleeting, negative world we live in, choose grace!