Seasons With Grace

After five weeks at home following his shoulder surgery, Tom will  return to work tomorrow.

No more hours lolling around in our winter room watching movies and tv series on dvd, trying to be first to solve the mysteries, squealing toward the tv, "Wait for back-up! Stay out of that dark room! Shoot him! Shoot him!"

No more days when, if I washed a load of laundry, ran down to the video store, wrote in my blog and washed the dishes in between movies, I considered it a highly productive day.

And ok, maybe I wasn't a mega-productive, but it was a learning season. But then, every season is rife with lessons.

I relearned a lot these past 5 weeks, like, God sends Grace to help me do anything, only sometimes I fail to open the door for her when she knocks. I keep her standing outside in the rain while inside, I try to keep my normal schedule. Yet here God sent Grace almost Mary Poppins-style to give me a break. To present peace and rest in the middle of this season of helping Tom. To give me permission to sit and keep him company while he healed.

He reassured me there was nothing more important to do. Never is anything more vital than what God asks us to do at any given time.

The only hard minutes these weeks were when I felt pressured to do 'business-as-usual', to keep up, do work, alone, when Grace and I should have been doing it together.

But I'm learning. Like, when I'm frustrated, I've again, shut Grace out of the house and closed my ears to her knocking. I've, like a child who's failing at dressing herself, cried, "I do it myself! I do it myself!" till she falls in an exhausted heap upon the floor.

I'm learning to recognize that frustration comes from one of two things:

Either I am doing what God never asked me to in the first place
-- or--
I'm doing what God asked me, but I'm doing it without His help. Without Grace.

Frustration, for me, has become like a red light suddenly flashing on a car's dashboard. "Warning! Warning! Something is wrong!" And when I see that red light I'm learning to veer off the road, sit awhile and calm down.

Then proceed with Grace to the next season just up ahead.



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