Overwhelmed By Grace
God’s grace in our life is overwhelming.
Overwhelming to the point that it has brought us to tears. There have been little (and big) things that God has done in our life that have just made us drop in prayer on the spot in humble thanks to Him.
I have wanted to talk about Christmas and what that has meant for us, but I have had a hard time forming in my head, words, that would express what we feel, but also what God is doing in our life.
We have realized a common theme of “grace” that we keep coming back to. At times, we are overwhelmed by it. During the days leading up to Christmas and Christmas itself, there were times when both Dan and I had to step away from the festivities and just deal with the emotions that were coming on. We had to take a moment and just reflect. It was hard to see all kinds of cuteness in kids and only dream about what our children would’ve looked like. We really missed our kids this Christmas season – yet, it is the only “first Christmas” without them. We knew the “first Christmas” would be hard, yet in it, we had our nieces and nephews to love on. We are SO BLESSED to have them in our life – to love them, hold them, and squeeze them (maybe too hard at times :)). That is God’s grace. Sometimes tears would fall over such little things, but it’s because it was a whole new situation – a major holiday without them, except the memories. A popular song during Christmastime is “Breath of Heaven” and boy is that a hard song to not get all teary-eyed over in the first place, but this year, it was especially hard to hear. I think that song will always hold a special place in my heart. I can’t imagine what Mary felt, carrying THE Savior! Again, it brought us back to grace – the undeserving opportunity we have to be parents to two little ones in heaven. That is a gift that no one can take away – it is a pure gift from God. Though Christmas was hard at times, we feel so blessed to be where we are at. Like I’ve said before, God has shown Himself to us in ways we never recognized Him before. God is always there – sometimes we just have blinders on. How gracious God is, to give up His Son, so that we may have life!
And another overwhelming way God has shown His grace to us is through the opportunity that I have to join Dan on the mission trip to Belize. Today has been filled with many tears as we sat in complete humbleness over what God was doing through people we don’t even know. It is overwhelming and has made us speechless (quite hard to do for us!). All we can do is just fall into God’s presence in prayer and worship of how He is working in our life. So, on January 13, we both will be heading to Belize with another couple. We are extremely excited to see what God’s plan looks like for us in Belize. I was just reading something today in my Bible study book about how God sometimes “unrolls the scroll” of our life’s story, very slowly. It may not be in our timing, but if we follow His will, He will guide us in HIS path that He has already written out for us. We are still speechless that this is what He had planned, but are so thankful for the opportunity and can’t wait to see what God has in store for us there and also as we prepare our hearts and minds to go. The generosity of others is something we cannot say “thank you” enough for – it has overwhelmed us to tears, but we know it is an extension of God’s grace.
