Grace in the form of a big boot
Today’s Five Minute Friday word is GRACE.
GO
Once upon a time, I was in a relationship that wasn’t the most stellar. I thought it was. I was in love. I was also crazy immature and didn’t know what true love was all about.
That relationship began to fizzle. I prayed and hoped and begged for it to stay together.
I cried.
I sobbed.
I plead my case, and I was just sure it would be patched up.
I’d never prayed so hard in my entire life.
I prayed that God would repair the relationship. I prayed that He would bring this man back to me and make everything better.
He didn’t.
It ended. I was broken and battered.
I was not the same person I had been.
Instead, I was a new person. I was the new me. The good me. The me that I loved.
Instead of the me that had been bending myself to meet the expectations of another person.
Although I had prayed and begged and read the Word searching for insight about how to fix things, He didn’t fix it. He let it go down the path it needed to go.
Every time I thought things were getting better, the Lord did what I described later as “kicking me in the face with a big boot.”
Every time I thought that he was coming home and we’d be a family again, something else would happen. My eyes would be opened to more information, or I’d be treated the same way I’d always been treated.
And so finally, I let it go. I let Him hold my heart and guide me.
And I let the relationship end.
As hard as it was, I let it go.
That flesh that had been made one? It ripped apart. I’ve never hurt so much in my entire life.
But then, that flesh began to repair itself.
And not too much longer, He gave me the most gracious gift ever: Aaron.
And yes, Aaron is still a man and still human and can still grate on my nerves.
But through His grace, I was given the beautiful opportunity to learn what true love is. What mature love is. What loving myself could look like in the eyes of another human being.
That is the true meaning of grace. Even though I thought I knew what was better and assumed my prayers were going unanswered, they were instead being answered with grace. So much better than I could have ever planned.
STOP
Oh I know that boot well. In our case, it was finding out about our daughter’s cleft at a routine ultrasound, and then—three years later—finding out she has childhood apraxia of speech. In each case, the plans we had were dashed and yet this is still our child—our beautiful, brilliant, and “amazing Anna.” It took awhile for me to make my peace with God and to see his grace in all we experienced, but I can now and I am grateful. God bless!
I read about your Anna. What a wonderful story of how we must trust Him. Thank you for stopping by!
That’s exactly the way it works! His will. HIS will. I’ve prayed feverishly for things and been told “no”, and was grateful later for that answer. Beautiful, thought-provoking post, Lydia.
Thank you, Lorinda. He does seem to always know what’s best, huh?
It’s always profound to see what greatness God can make out of our mistakes and missteps. I have fought hard for some things in my life that were not to be and in retrospect I am so glad things didn’t work out the way *I* wanted them to!
It’s also funny how we mere mortals think we can control anything of any significance. 🙂
Love this. Love you.
Love you back.
God’s plans are see a bigger picture, one I don’t always see in the middle of things. I love e way you crafted your sentences with short, intense emotion. It was felt. Beautifully written and so thankful for grace.
You are right about how hard it is to see the bigger picture in the midst of everything. Thank you so much for stopping by!