Where Grace Abounds
{Right up front I want you to know that I originally wrote this for my sister-in-law and her sister’s joint baby shower. I hope you hear the grace behind these words. I believe that God builds families and what and how He builds is good. More than a certain number of children or the experiences we might have in common—I want you to know God’s goodness is towards YOU. I pray that you would be able to believe with hope that God is working out a good story in YOUR life.}
Sometimes I’d like to wish more children than can be managed for everyone.
The wise Jim Gaffigan says having four kids is like drowning and someone throws you a baby. He’s not wrong. But Jim forgot to name the ocean you are drowning in.
Sure, sometimes you are up with the preteen who forgot to tell you about his school project due tomorrow, while letting a teething baby gum your finger with one hand and putting butter into the preschooler’s gum-stuck hair with the other.
You are drowning, but the name of the ocean is grace. God has done blessed your life right up to the brim, and you are standing on your tippy toes, and you can’t even get your nose above the blessings. You can’t contain them, control them, or manage a schedule for them without forgetting someone’s dentist appointment.
Looking like you have it all together is an illusion anyway, and—like eating in restaurants when you have three or more kids—it’s one you can no longer afford. Instead, you have been gifted countless opportunities to live God’s amazing grace.
You might feel frazzled, overwhelmed, needy, and tired, but you aren’t walking with a limp—you are walking with a lean. You are revealing the at-work, very-present God-with-you.
“If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.”
Sometimes I’d like to wish last babies for everyone.
For a baby whose arrival confounds you. You never dreamed of who she might be and what she might do—and you get to discover that God’s dreams surpass ours and stand on their own as GOOD without an ounce of help from our imaginations.
Only God could imagine how the oldest children would adopt her, not as rival, but as their own. How the baby can entangle you all with the intoxication of a new beginning when all has become practice schedules and errands.
Only God could imagine how a woman who has been around the block a few times now would know what matters most—sleep and showers and food (obviously)—and rocking in the dark, the baby’s downy skin outlined by moonlight, and—the scent!!—how you drink in the scent of newborn baby like it is the fountain of youth and you are thirsty… and old.
With your first child, you want to put your best foot forward.
With your last child, you want to keep your feet in place. Life is no longer a location to hurry towards; it’s a fleeting gift. So you linger. You smell. You “let your heart bay to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on soft cheeks.”**
A last baby is something special.
Sometimes I’d like to wish a baby after losses for everyone.
Not necessarily the losses, but what comes after. How when you’ve realized that pain and suffering can come for you, when the losses stack up and seem unfair and you wonder what you did to cause such a thing. When you are forced to excavate hope from the very bottom of yourself and look pain in the face and declare by your own living: “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away and someone belongs here and God is still good and I will bless His name.”
To see with your own eyes, that what you laid down in devastation, God raises up, and stuffs full of rolls and fuzzy hair and bright eyes.
We all can recognize the miracle of a baby. But a baby after losses? It’s a stormy sky, billowing anvil topped clouds with dark bottoms, bright sunshine piercing through the gaps like swords, and a rainbow—brighter than anything—declaring God’s promises are yes and amen.
Suffering isn’t the absence of God’s goodness; it’s the very soil in which His grace abounds.
you are my favorite reason to never give up
Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than a woman believing for life in this land of death?
Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than a woman propelled forward by the Holy Spirit and God’s good plans for her family?
Have you ever seen anything more beautiful than a woman laying down her life over and over again and seeing God raise beauty out of her surrender?
Friend, you are a beautiful woman.
Dear Hope-Excavators, Bottom-of-Yourself Soul-Scrapers—may God’s presence follow you; may His goodness astound you. You are beautiful. And courageous. And so very worthy of celebrating.
Happy Mother’s Day.
-Amanda Conquers
Before you go, I'd love to know: How has God's grace abounded in your life through the journey of motherhood (no matter where on the journey you are)?
**These pretty words are from The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.
The third to last photo was taken by Katie Fewell Photography and is used with permission.