I bought a book, this week, to add to my repertoire of nightly reading materials for Seth. "If I Could Ask God Anything" poses questions, which might be typical of kids, and then answers them using newer translations of scripture.
Last night, we explored the idea of how you could know that God is real, even though He is invisible...Honestly, folks, that's a tough one...and on the really bad days, I struggle to know this myself.

As we were walking home from kindergarten today, Seth remarked about the wind and how it was trying to blow him away- how, like the new book we read last night, had said, wind is invisible but you could feel it and see it moving the branches of the trees...I asked him if he could feel God the same way as he feels the wind, to which he quipped "I just believe he's there, Mommy...that's all."

Seth often impulsively cleans up public spaces..

As we started down the hill, toward our house, I noticed that a neighbor's recycling can had blown over into the street, spilling it's contents throughout her yard, on the sidewalk, and in the grass between houses.  For a second, I entertained the notion of cleaning up the trash, but then I remembered how rude she had been to us in the fall, and so I kept walking....i didn't want to waste my time and energy on her mess...plus, my body was sore from an hour of squats and jumps and rowing and burpees....Besides, I hadn't eaten a morsel since the night before...And, really, I just wanted to get home.    I decided, somewhere in my heart, which is filthy with judgement and bitterness and hypocrisy, sometimes, that all of those excuses justified my inaction. Somehow, the "love thy neighbor" didn't always need to apply to me.

But Seth stopped.....my six year old, who is prone to tantrums and drives us all nuts, nearly every day, stood the neighbor's recycling can up and proceeded to deposit every single piece of trash that had scattered about...at least fifty cans, bottles, boxes...He didn't question whether our neighbor deserved this kindness...He didn't expect a thank you or a sticker or a prize....He didn't ponder that it wasn't his responsibility....He just did it...and, then, joyfully galloped on home....leaving me humbled and ashamed of my hardened heart and stubborn ways.

I can't see God, friends...I can't prove to you, with any tangible evidence, that God exists...but today I saw my kid give every ounce of energy that  he had, to helping somebody else...for no good reason...just because...Somebody who wasn't watching...Somebody who wasn't going to praise him or thank him... Seth stooped down, over and over again, TO PICK UP SOMEBODY ELSE'S GARBAGE, which was dirty, and messy, with sharp edges and remnants of food and odor.  ....Somebody who has done nothing to earn his thoughtfulness...No, I cant show you this God I speak about... but i can share with you my stories, and how i know, without question, that THIS...this kind of generosity with reckless abandon, from a little kid...THIS is God- and for now, it's all I need to see, to believe.

http://mundanefaithfulness.com/2014/03/10/tuesday-grace-letters-2/I found Kara Tippetts and her blog, Mundane Faithfulness, a few months ago....I'd been putting off sleep, one night, and, a friend had shared a link to Kara's story, on Facebook.  Kara asked those of her followers, who are also bloggers, to join her on Tuesdays for her segment on grace letters...Today, she has asked that we compose a letter to someone whose grace has deeply impacted our lives...so...here we go...

There has been an abundance of grace shown to me, in my forty- three years on this earth...the faces of all of those who have loved me with unconditional fervor and steadfast support have run through my mind, like a movie, today..but for now, the floor belongs to this guy, my guy:




Dear Tom,
Sitting across from you, this afternoon, at the Dr.'s office, as we listened for a ray of hope, from a specialist who is going to be working with our son, I noticed the distance between us...how you sat all alone on the couch, and I in an adjacent chair...and how it seems so commonplace, anymore...This is a hard season for us...and we are weary from the "hard"...from the wringing of hands...the yelling...the hopelessness of seeking answers where there seem to be none.  We are desperate and in that desperation, we blame who we can- each other.  Suddenly our sons' battles become our own...and its raw and ugly and filled with resentments and so much pain...Our love, which began as a firestorm, is, at times, barely an ember...and I feel every ounce of those statistics that say that 80% of couples with children who have special needs, have marriages that end in divorce.  Sometimes there's just nothing left to give, at the end of the day...and those days accumulate into a mountain that can seem much too steep to climb.
I was thinking, this morning, after our blowup last night, that maybe a good marriage is not made up of the easy or the fun or the comfortable...maybe the core of this commitment lies in our ability to weather the hard...and the lessons,that this hard, holds for us.  When life is a whirlwind of staggering blows, maybe the grace is in the holding still -not running...in the clinging to the remnants of the threadbare fabric that binds us together......
I long to explore this with you...this being still.. honoring the shards of "us"- the richly hewn bond of decades of getting through- through the harrowing days of loss and grief, newborns and sleep deprivation, cancer, interstate moving, paycuts,  akathisia and the post traumatic stress of those episodes, explosive children,autism spectrum disorder...
Im longing to surrender to the battle of wanting a love that looks pretty, with soft edges and clean lines....and accepting our hard, our flawed, ....Our crooked...Our fragile...Our torn and mended. Everyday, I'm longing for you...even in my meanness....I just miss you.
Thankyou for the grace of kisses, in elevators, and of long embraces, in the kitchen, today.  Thankyou for often being the strong one...the blindly optimistic...Thankyou for seeking me out when I retreat, in darkness...but mostly, Thankyou for saying "no matter what."

love,
Me