And the theme of March will be grace. Grace upon grace. 

grace ^{[ greys ]} 
noun. 
a moral strength

I wonder if it’s tougher to experience grace…either giving or receiving it…when we are looking at the outcome rather than the process? When we are focused on the ‘what I want’ rather than the ‘what I have.’ When we focus on where we wish to be rather than the purpose of where we are.

What do you think?

Here are a few examples I can think of:

1. Parenting. If I wish my kids to be certain kinds of adults (outcomes), I will struggle to extend grace as every time they do something that strays from the ‘where I want them to get,’ I’ll feel less and less in control. I’ll get tunnel-vision and my grip will go next-level thinking that if I don’t reign it in, it’s just gonna keep getting way harder to get back on track. (I say this cuz that’s how I parented!)
2. Personal success. If I only live in the dreams and goals (outcomes), I will struggle to accept grace in my failures. My failures feel insurmountable, irredeemable and just take me further and further away from where I want to go. And additionally, I will also struggle to accept the grace that comes with the slight redirections or the sharp unexpected left turns, not understanding how I’ll stay on course if I have to blindly find my way back. (I say this cuz that’s how I lived!)
3. Faith. If grace is connected to strings as so often it is, the moment it feels too impossible to meet Jesus halfway (Jesus….the only actual sinless being to have walked this earth; Jesus…his perfection WAY out of our human reach) is the moment I give up. Turns out there is no way I can even meet him two steps into halfway. And if halfway is my outcome…a place impossible to reach, grace becomes too hard to comprehend and therefore too hard to accept. (I say this cuz that’s how I thought!)

To be more able to understand, accept and give grace, much more value must be placed on the process than on the outcome. And the process is what is present. And the present is what is purposed.

P.S. The word nerd in me feels like process is different than progress…

*Post 1090

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Grateful and Exhausted :: 3/29/18 :: Post 204

It was a crazy day…

I went to Dr. Williams today to get my right side all filled back up….yikes. I forgot that pain! But man am I glad I don’t have to wear a tight sports bra and stuff like a 12 year old who is trying to fit in with girls more endowed than them…

I was in serious discomfort all day and I had to keep it together for quite a bit of the day so tonight I’m spent. Emotionally and physically. I’ve cried a few times this evening as the feelings of being overwhelmed have hit. 

But tomorrow we are going to Breckenridge for a little family respite. And we are so excited. 

Much needed rest, celebration and time together that we get to enjoy. 

Grateful. 

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To Live INTO Something :: 3/29/19 :: Post 563

It’s a strange thing… The last several days have been filled with thoughts of what I was thinking and feeling at the time this whole journey started. 

When I’m driving, I can so easily recall the memories of my car accident. How it felt to get hit, how I saw a semi tear off my front wheel and send it flying, the moment of sharpness when I realized I had lived through it…

When I’m doing my hair in the morning, I can easily recall the memories of hearing ‘you have cancer’ and ‘you’ll need chemo to fight this cancer and have a chance at surviving’. Remembering how it felt to have my head shaved and the tears that ran down my cheeks. Remembering the how-to-put-on-a-wig lesson….and going home with purple hair…and setting up my ‘wig station’ when we got home that day. Remembering the feeling of falling asleep that night telling myself ‘you will go to work tomorrow with your head shaved because if you don’t, you’ll always regret it…and if you don’t do it tomorrow, you’ll never have the courage to do it at all.’ Remembering putting lipstick on the next day to help myself feel prettier than I felt because it was the first day of going into the world with a shaved head….the intensity of the insecurities and fear that I was looking straight in the eye. 

When I look in the mirror and see the scars that tell this treacherous story, I can still feel the pit in my stomach when I heard Dr. Moore say ‘chemo’ and ‘radiation’ and ‘oncologist’ and ‘reconstruction’… The news always getting worse with each appointment I went to…uncertain how to hold onto hope when hopes kept getting dashed. I can remember the face of the nurse who talked to me while I got my port placed…and I can remember laying there being astounded and devastated that I was even getting a chemo port. Remembering going home that day thinking that I had drains woven through what was left of my torso after mastectomy and just hanging outta my sides, tissue expanders filled with saline and magnets stuck between pectoralis muscles and a port with a tube sewn into my jugular – so much plastic invading my body. Remembering the sheer anger I felt when Dr. Etten told me that she needed me to call a gynecological oncologist because she was concerned with what my ultrasound showed a year after hearing ‘you’ll need both a medical oncologist and a radiation oncologist to battle this breast cancer’…wondering how the hell any cancer could have lived through the hell cancer put me through…the chaos that overwhelmed my head and the fear that overwhelmed my heart.

When my sweet husband touches my skin and I can’t feel anything, I can remember the way my body used to feel before it was cut into and taken apart. Remembering the sensation and the connection and the intimacy of life before cancer. And then remembering the sheer pain of grieving and the days and nights that I would sit in my chair sobbing as I desperately wanted to crawl out of my own broken body and discard it like trash…wishing to wake up and have it all be a bad dream.

As much as this story hurts, I want to hold it close. I want to stay connected to these memories, these feelings, these transformative moments…I want to live into every crevice of the purpose so that I can live out every bit of the transformation.

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No post for 3/29/20

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