When the Day Makes Way for Grace.

Have you ever had one of those days?

Like today.  Call from my child’s school.  Saying…..there has been a mistake.

Hepatitis B. Not in records.  Deleted from the computers at the clinic.

Shots.  Three kids.  Countless foster infants.  All up to date.  But, they insist. 

So…we make a road trip.  Twenty miles away.  To our pediatrician.  Frustration burning like the fumes from my car speeding.

Bringing records to attention. Resisting the temptation to question….

“How could a computer lose my daughters records?”

And yet…..as I am bubbling from the disruption of my own agenda.  I hear….over and over again….

“Grace”…”Grace”. 

And I know….my purpose to “get things done”….

Would have to wait.

Standing in medical line.  Held back by His patience keeping me still.

Waiting.

But then, I see a familiar face.

Someone I knew twenty years ago.  A pal from high school.

And I think…“How strange.”

We talk further…..

Though time keeps calling me away.

And I am late for wedding number two in two days.

Just took husband to surgery.  Rushing around with a whirlwind of things to do.

Yet, still trying to say…in the most casual way,

“So, how has it been going”?

His answer. Surprising me.

“Terrible.”

He goes on….

I have a growth. Something like a tumor.  Fever. Infection.  Surgery from the pain.  And my wife is leaving me….After 12 years of marriage.  And my kids are struggling to do what I say…

And on and on…He goes….caught in the whirlwind of his pain.

And He asks me…

How did you do it?  How have you been married so long?

My answer must have seemed strange….but it is the only word that came to mind, at the time….

“Grace.”

He takes a step back or two.

Not what he expected from the wild girl driving sports car with top down, in High School.

And He said…

“Where are your kids living?”

And I said, “My oldest is on Missions.  Serving the poor overseas.”

And finally.  I realize…. though late.  Regardless of lost records and surgery and weddings……

It’s not about me.

It’s about people.  

People.  Lonely.  Hurting.  Crying for something….

People.

Looking for a way to get through….

Life.

And I sit unalarmed by His colorful language. His untailored ways to look at life.

Remembering…..any change in me…..was only made through Christ.

And I leave.  Knowing.

There are no mistakes.

God had me here.  Today.

To testify….

God can take the worst of people….worst of circumstances, and by grace, somehow set them…..

Free.

I leave. Saying….

“I will pray for you.” 

Him receiving it happily.

Then.  I know…

My job is through.

Not to get the records I had thought I came for…

But to dispense Christ…The Hope of the World……

To this brother.  This man….

At a crucial point in His life.

Leaving.  Knowing….

Though I am late.  Though the day doesn’t go the way I plan….

I cling to the only thing that matters, in the end…..

While leaving.  Praying.  For the one I had encountered today….

……That he would find grace too…..

(Linking with Shanda)