Got Grace?

Eleven months out of each year for the last few years, I've tried to do only things which God was giving me Grace to do. I've written about my days with Grace before here and here.

Letting Grace lead me around to help, teach and strengthen me has totally changed my entire life, even though I'm still living in the same ol' house in the same ol' town and with the same ol' husband that I lived with in my days before Grace. They are all the same, yet the way I treat them and look at them is vastly different.

So anyway, like I said, eleven months out of each year I've gotten pretty good at cooperating with Grace and going only where she goes and doing only what she whispers to me that she will help me do. She brings a flow to my days, a type of ease, a rhythm--all of which were once as foreign to me as Timbukto.

And then comes December.

Yes, the Christmas month arrives and immediately I return to the old ways. The old habits of over-doing, over-spending and over-analyzing. Where I spent eleven months trying not to live like everyone else around me, suddenly I'm trying to be just like them once again. And then also once again, everything feels like a struggle, as though I'm walking against hurricane-force winds--trying so hard to step forward, but mostly just falling and twisting and slipping behind.

Well, this Christmas month is going to be different. No, I mean it.

I am not going to stuff and roll Grace somewhere beneath the Christmas tree. I am not going to celebrate Christmas the way everybody else in this stressed-out world does. And I am not going to allow myself to feel hurried or harried or worried or frustrated, either.

No, instead, this December, I'm going to hand over the controls to Grace. I'm going to send Christmas cards only to those people she tells me to send them to and I'll give gifts only to those people Grace points to. I'll go shopping, buy decorations, mail packages, eat desserts, and watch Christmas movies only when Grace nudges me.

Well, that's my goal, anyway.

It's time that I let Grace guide me even in December. Her wisdom is indispensable the other 11 months.

I think she just might be up to helping me through the Christmas month, too.

***

"And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him." Luke 2:40

"From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another." John 1:16