Unexpected grace

There are sometimes moments, or pauses in the everydayness of life, when I am confronted with a memory or an emotion that I didn't realized I had or felt. Which kinda doesn't make sense...but last night/today I was awash with just such a moment.

After a harrowing few days of worry, driving, praying and hospital sitting....I found myself home at last with my oldest daughter....healing from an abscess on her tonsil which landed her in the hospital for a couple of days. Driving to the drug store to pick up her prescriptions, I was blindsided by a song, which for some reason unleashed the floodgates of all the emotions that I had desperately been trying to stuff inside for the last few days.

More than the release of tension from this event came out though. I found myself thinking of her, my oldest, and how blessed I am to have her...(and the other 4 as well). I remembered vividly a time before she was born, when I believed that I would likely never have children. Because of a series of bad choices I made when I was younger (understatement), I had come to believe that God's consequence for my actions would certainly be to withhold a family from me. I believed this, and actually had accepted it without anger or bitterness....I believed, like many others sometimes do, that I would get what I deserved.

Then I found myself pregnant with Savannah....during the whole thing, I waited for something to happen. Something bad. And it never did. During my pregnancy...one day alone in our apartment, I was reading about God and his forgiveness, grace...and a quote from a teacher about His grace being a free gift that we don't deserve or ask for...unmerited favor! In that moment I knew that I wanted this grace...I wanted to believe in it, to believe that God wanted me to have it....from Him...a gift. I knew in that moment Who I would follow my whole life....and that He had already extended His grace, in the child that He had created inside of me. That was my first glimpse of His grace....and today....in the car the choices that I had made so long ago came flooding back over me....along with the very real knowledge that He had extended grace despite them. I don't often look back with regret or remorse....but today I experienced sorrow and a sense of loss for a child that I never had....and huge joy, to be here in this moment with the 5 that came later.

Sometimes it is easy for me to forget and get caught up in the busyness of life and single parenting.....and feel overwhelmed by the responsibility and just straight up hard work of it! Sometimes it is easy for me to forget and get caught up in the everydayness of life and I forget Who is guiding mine. Fortunately on days like today, He gently reminds me exactly how much He has loved me, and how much He always will. He reminds me of how huge and endless His grace is.....and that He extends it freely....especially when we don't deserve it!