Revealing Grace

A few months ago I was walking around the streets of Baltimore with a dear friend. . . hopelessly lost. In the midst of the joy of being together on an adventure we had utterly forgotten where the car was parked. As the miles and hours passed (oh yes, we were lost for that long) we began to get frazzled and a little frustrated with our inability to be where we "needed" to be. As we sat in a little coffee shop, windblown and tired, I decided that if we were going to be lost we might as well enjoy it! There was a sort of beauty in being lost and lost with a friend. So I pushed aside the growing frustration and decided to let the unexpected beauty fill my sight. As we continued walking we ran into churches, gardens, and museums that we would never have seen if we had taken the "easy" path. It was a longer journey for sure, but it would be a memory for a lifetime.  What had started out as a frustrating misadventure was now a whole new beautiful adventure.  2014...

I don't remember what we were talking about when I responded to two of our students, "My love is not dependent on your actions." "So if I came to the Kennel all high and jacked up, would you still love me?" one of them asked. "No!" said the other kid, "She would kick you out!" I gave that kid a look. To the other one I responded, "Well, I would be disappointed and a little sad, but I would still love you." They thought for a second and then said with sincerity and interest,  "then what is  your love dependent on?"  I think that in the moment I replied, "Jesus, I guess." Which isn't a very good explanation, but hey, I don't work well under pressure! In fact, their question kind of caught me off guard. I had to think about it for a while. What, if not what they do or say, does my love depend on? Do I love them less when they disappoint me? The answer, of course, is no. In fact, I am perhaps ...

We should have known when we were scrapping inches of snow and ice off the truck at 6:30am that the day wasn't going to go as planned. Just 12 hours earlier there had been 5 people planning to go to Phoenix for a furniture-retrieving, sunshine-loving adventure. At 6:25am the last person backed-out and it was down to two. As much as I adore winter, I have to admit that I'm not quite used to it yet. So I hadn't received the common-sense memo that ice+snow+nightfall will equal a lot of work before you can drive away. So my faithful friend and I took to the windows with a tiny ice scraper and our sleeves to make the windshield less of a Christmas wonderland. It wasn't the last time that we would be unprepared that day.  After enough of the windshield was cleared we drove away in the snow, ice, and dark to Phoenix, land of eternal sunshine and free furniture.  About an hour into the 3 hour drive, coffee in hand and a strong will to not fall asleep we encountere...

I'm going to admit something here, straight out into the crazy world of internet readers. Are you ready for it? Ok. . . I've been stressed.  Whew! Got that out there. I feel better now. I've always had these idealistic views about how stress serves no purpose and reveals a distrust in God's provision (which is true). So I claimed an easy-going attitude and a yippidee-do-da nature and walked through life at ease, right? Well, despite these good intentions a new sneaky stress started to manifest itself in the tightness of my chest and the sleep that seemed to constantly evade me for about a month or two. As much as I wished I could get rid of it, no amount of forced positivity could change the manifestation of the stress in my life. I couldn't figure out why this was happening until a co-worker pointed out with such nonchalance, "well yea you are stressed, you have a new job you are trying to figure out." Oh yea, that thing. The new job. The new...