October 6, 2014

This Thing Called Grace

"Are you sure you don't want me to press that piece?" 
She asked it like she was desperate to iron out the wrinkles in this life. To smooth the valleys and mountains and make time run silky-straight. 
Grandma has had lots of hills in her lifetime, I think. 
I handed her the fabric with a smile and a shake of my head. 
I guess we young ones don't understand what it's like to have a mess of wrinkles behind us. 
I don't feel the pain of each jarring bump like my grandma does.
She sure could use a good blanket of grace to wrap herself close in.
Because where she comes from, God lives at church and a Bible is a book and grace might be a dancer as easily as forgiveness. 
That life has been awful bumpy. 
And it makes my heart hurt when she frets about being a pain to us and she wishes she didn't cause so much trouble.
So I stretch out my grace blanket, try to pad some of her pain.
"Grandma, we love you. We want to do things for you because we love you.
And she feels this grace touching soft and her face goes happy sweet.
She brings back the fabric, crisp smooth and warm, and I'm thinking about how a wrinkle doesn't make a dress bad.
But maybe she doesn't see that a dress is a dress no matter how creased. That this dress will get folded and wrinkled and dirty and worn but will remain whole and loved in the eyes of it's owner. 
Life can be like that sometimes. 
No matter how hilly or wrinkled it is, life is still life. 
And we can choose to see it with the padding of grace as a beautiful masterpiece to be loved and worn out. 
Or we can see it as something that needs to be fixed - this life that keeps growing mountains and folds no matter how hard we press our troubles away. 
For some people, each bump just hurts to much to see the beauty of this thing called a life. 
But there is hope. It's called grace. 
And it doesn't numb the pain but it gives a new perspective and a new heart to this life. 
Today I'm choosing grace. You too? I'm glad. This journey is a whole lot sweeter wrapped in His arms.


(tutorial coming soon on little dresses for Africa - my new favorite project with a purpose!) 

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