This is Amazing Grace

As we are getting back into the swing of life after winter break, I feel the Lord has been opening up my eyes and my heart to more of what grace is.  Like a lot of believers, I profess and depend on grace, but find myself being gradually lifted out of a pit I didn't even know I was still in, my eyes popping and fixed on vistas I didn't know I was missing.

I should start by describing my son Stefan's progress.  I just talked to his new health inclusion aide at school, and she told me that from the second day she was there, she noticed a significant improvement.  She said he reaches out to kids who are having emotional difficulties - a kid who has a diagnosis of autism.  He is talking more and more - a kid who barely had five words at age 2.  He is participating in circle time and interested in the centers - a kid who could hardly attend to any task for more than 2 minutes one year ago.

I feel I should stop myself.  It isn't the point all that he can do or cannot do, and I don't mean to boast.  It's just that there are real evidences that things are getting better for him, and for all of us.  We have had a LOT of therapy in the past month and a half, and it has come without extra out-of-pocket cost to us.  We couldn't have afforded it, but clearly, it is what Stefan needed, and its changing all of our lives.

I wrote a poem a few years ago about the struggles I was having as a mom - maybe it will bless someone.

Melancholy mama; will I ever get it right?
Seems like every time I try, things just never turn out right.
Respite and releases only bring me clarity:
Time just isn't what it used to be.
Lord, I know your spirit hovered over chaos deep
Caused the world I know to be; could you order life for me?
Something's got to give, and now I wonder if it's me?
Life just isn't what it used to be.

Parenting is still burdensome, but less so right now.  Having a burden eased, I have been thinking back over the past three years, and realizing how heavily it weighed, and I wasn't even aware of how much of a false belief it was.  Oh, the things I did for image control - thinking that if I could just make it look like I had it together, it would be so.  All of the shoulds - all the pressure; it was crushing me.   It strikes me, though, that perhaps it was crushing me so it could get squeezed out.  For here is what I am now realizing: just like I was living with a burden of all of the good things I wanted to do - right things! - but could not, so a lot of people are trying to be good, to prove themselves, without the proper aids.  Just as Stefan's therapists have come into our lives freely, willingly, invitationally, to work alongside us and enable a radically different life, so the Holy Spirit and the word of the Lord come into a life to enable a grace-empowered, God-focused, divinely fruitful existence.  

Almost greater than that sense of a doctrinal analogy was the sense of better understanding my limitations - limitations I didn't really understand that I had, and therefore was not very well able to communicate.  I am so very grateful that there are people in the world who choose to go into professions that help families with given sets of limitations.  It really sets them free.  Please keep on being God's hands and feet in a grace-starved world.  We are so thankful for you.

Here is the song that has been on my heart.  It is about God's Amazing Grace.