Hard Grace..

So, I was on facebook a couple days ago, feeling sorry for myself as I had suffered the fate all iphone users fear; my phone fell in the toilet, and as it sat in a bowl of rice on the top of the fridge, and as I held my breath at the hope of it's rescue it all seemed like the appropriate final close to my year. 2014.

On December 30 I went to bed seething at myself at the stupidity of it all. I know you shouldn't keep your phone in your back pocket, I know people have dropped their phones in the toilet. I knew better but figured it wouldn't happen to me because I was aware of the risks. So, I didn't sleep well that night, and the next morning I had no interest in doing what Brad and I had planned, which was a romantic dinner at home after the boys had gone to bed. I wanted to crawl under a rock and stay there. My day went on and as I was having a shower the boys coloured each other with red marker *sigh* and it just furthered my disgust with myself over this dumb phone and the stupid toilet and just everything else that had gone wrong for me this year.

Getting back to being on facebook... I was on my newsfeed and a question came up from an author I follow. "What word or phrase would you use to describe your 2014?"
Now I don't normally respond to people I don't know. I follow this author because she wrote an amazing book and it's the easiest way for me to access her blog. But this time, for whatever reason, I was compelled, or rather, propelled - as if I was being pushed to do it. And I responded that if I could take two words I'd say 2014 was hard grace. And not just 2014. Anyone who knows me well knows that I have had three hard years. Part of this roots in the fact that I am easily affected by the trials of the people I love and so things that were happening to my close friends and family were deeply affecting me to the point were frustration took hold, and weariness bore deep, my faith was thin and my patience short. I felt I was not given the opportunity to breathe and so frustrations from one day bled into the next and so on... Three years of feeling like I was barely keeping my head above water. From two near deaths, to cancer, to a best friend moving away, to undetermined tumours, and paralyzing anxiety attacks, high risk pregnancy, infections, eye surgery, unemployment... Everyone That was close to me was dealing with something intense and we were right in the thick of our own steaming pile.

Tell me, how would you find breath? When you start attacking each other, and your love for your children feels thread bare? You are so overwhelmed with it all that when you see that text come in from someone you just can't bear to look at it because you just can't handle one more thing. And you find yourself praying for just six months of peace. Please God, just six months where everything is ok.

On go the days, and weeks, and months, and years and people are recovering. No more near deaths, surgeries have happened and been successful, no more infections, the battle over anxiety is won. The people closest to me are healing, being repaired, and being restored. But me. Here I sit, still reeling from the years. These have been hard years. And yes, I know, there are harder times for other people, but this is where I am at. Still questioning why, still doubting myself, still refusing to let any roots dig in.

Hard grace seems like such a strange concept, it's an oxymoron isn't it? This author I wrote to responded to my comment recalling a book she'd read called Severe Mercy. Another oxymoron but in the lives of the faithful it is not so strange.

God hath not promised skies always blue,
flower strewn pathways all our lives through;
God hath not promised sun without rain,
Joy without sorrow, peace without pain

But God hath promised strength for the day
Rest for the labour, light for the way
Grace for the trials help from above
Unfailing sympathy undying love
(Annie Johnson Flint)

So, Yes. I know this, like KNOW it. However, when you are drowning... when you can't breathe. In coming up with those two words I was forced to look back at those years and try to find God in the midst of it all. He was there. I know it. But truly seeing him, or at least admitting that he was there because when you are angry and resentful and regretful, you don't want to admit God was with you. It feels better to tell yourself that you had to do it on your own. But how heretical is that? We know he is with us He came to earth to DIE so he could be with us. Immanuel - God with us. That is his name.

So, he was with me the whole time. I know it, but I couldn't feel it the way I wanted, because I wanted to not have to feel anything. I wanted things to go smooth. It hurts to be torn up, it hurts to not be able to breathe. I shake my head when I think back to my days as a single woman and the group of people I would spend time with. Once a month I would gather with these people for a devotional, singing, fellowship time and one song we almost always sang was "Refiner's fire" When I think about those lyrics now I want to shout at my younger self. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE SINGING!?" If we could all understand what that meant, being refined, knowing it would hurt, knowing it would tear and burn, even though we would know it means being closer to God, would we sing it? Would we?

So, I look back on these years and see God. And how do I see him? I see him as patient, sooo patient, and forgiving, and loving. I have been a total jerk. I know this. I have been a big baby. I know this too. And yet he is still there. I am thinking of Paul and the Romans and being more than conquerors, and if God is for us, and nothing can separate us... except maybe ourselves. I got in the way of my relationship with him and it's not the first time and I'm sure it won't be the last time. Continuing to die to self. It takes hard grace to learn this I guess. And God knows I have a lot to learn and maybe I'm the kind of person that needs to be hit over the head with it, or put in the corner to stew about it. Hard grace, severe mercy. The faithful take them both and praise God with them. I believe I will get there, I have to because I can't imagine my life without him.