Graces.

Come every  December my mind can’t help but meander back through the year. Taking stock of what happened, what didn’t happen, what I learned, what I’d like to learn, and marveling over how Jesus somehow always works things out. Which gives me confidence to know that whatever we are facing come December will one day, too, see itself worked out.
And what did I surmise from my ponderings? This was a year of change for me.
My heart finished healing; and then I “grew up” (a.k.a finally accepted the fact that I am somehow old enough to be what you would call “an adult”….where does the time go?)

Scriptures do it all the time for me, naturally, but isn’t it funny what else can bring your mind back to Christ because that thing drew you closer to him, showed you more of him? Be it a song, a movie, a book, a friend, a stranger, a pomegranate, whatever. Then out of nowhere it seems you are reminded of some time when you needed Jesus to be something, meet you somehow somewhere, and he did. He came through.

I think about growing “from grace to grace,” and how the grace I needed at one time I need no longer. Not that I don’t need grace now, by no means! I just need a different grace now.

I went to Texas in October. You know this. And this was not the first time I have driven back from Texas with the same very dear friend. No, we had been there before. Done that.

Yet I am astonished at how a lapse of time can change the experience, do you know what I mean? We were on the same roads. We were driving in the same states. And I know I say this like…all the time…but the difference is that we weren’t the same people.

When my friend and I were coming home from San Antonio we listened to the playlist from our previous San Antonio trip, just for old time’s sake. What a rush of memory, emotion. Those songs remind us of Oklahoma and stories that involve cowboys (which is one of my best stories, I will add) and coming adventures and gushy dreams all wrapped up in a layer of giggles. 20-something girl giggles.

Yes, men, we never stop that. Sorry. Women giggle till they die.

This time driving through Oklahoma, listening to the same songs we giggled about not two years ago, everything was different. Gone were the giggles, not replaced with sadness in the least, but gone nonetheless. The adventures had been had. Gushy dreams may or may not have come true.

But we were ok with it. Because what came about was better.

At the time of all the giggles (and I will add that I have giggled about a lot), all the dreams, all the excitement on the horizon, that was good. And they turned out to be good. God crafted those, used those, grew us in those. They were good. The giggles were a symbol of the grace we needed at that time.

It was Jesus gracing us with what we needed.
When we needed it.
Because he knows how to do that, because he knows us better than we do.

This time the grace we felt was deeper. More stable. More strong, felt with more conviction because it had been to us what we needed just that many more times. If grace could be more beautiful maybe we would describe it as that. I think we were more astounded by it this time around. Not to say that what we had at one time was fake or phony or somehow lacking, we simply had moved from grace….to grace.

We moved on to different songs after that trip down memory lane. I think we both reveled for a while, caught up in some conversation with the Giver of all things good, which in itself is an amazing thing to be able to do. Communion with God is grace, no doubt.

Goodness, I must be sappy tonight. Or maybe it’s just me trying to be intentional about putting thought into the Christmas season that brought this all on. Or maybe it’s because I saw certain movies again, or heard certain songs again that brings all of this to life. Convinces me of grace yet again and how his timing of it is always so perfect.

I stand amazed.

~~

In light of all this, my friend and I got together for a couple days, which is a grace in itself.

Her getting me all gussied up for a photoshoot for my business.
What a doll...a friend who does my hair.

In a little more normal of situation.