When it’s Time to Step Outdoors and Live.

Who would have guessed?  White, powder-like grace covers the ground.  Eight-year-old shouts from her window, scrambles downstairs. Warm clothes on. Wanting to rush out and make snow angels.

Our smallest one and I, much slower.  Me, remembering the cold, her not knowing why the green trees, pasture, and everything she has known since she has gotten here, now looks different.

I find my older daughter, flat on the white, face pointed to the heavens.  Joyfully swishing her arms and legs; up, down, up down. Always mesmerized by God, the heavens, since the time I can remember.  Adopted very young, her knowing her freedom, joy, the place she has here, with us, as family.

Our nearly two year old?  Not so much.

Tip-toeing outside, she hesitates to touch the white that covers the earth. Her feet land hard.  She slip once.  I catch her. The safe predictability shaken, her mind trying to calculate why this world, the one she has finally accepted, now white somehow doesn’t make sense.

I look in her eyes seeing confusion dancing with anticipation, uncertainty, fear. I try explaining the best I know how, “It’s snow”.  But then again, how do you explain the heavens opening, clouds raining down something unknown, something new, something never experienced before.

And don’t we often fear that which we can’t control? Those things our carnal eyes can’t see?

A few steps further, hesitant toddler hands reach down, feeling to gain control of the ground below her.  My older one still running, laughing, “Let’s make a snowman.  Let’s go sledding.”  Not ceasing to embrace this gift from heaven.

And truth be told, the opportunities are endless to those who believe, who trust in what’s unseen; those who live bold, fearless about what the open land before us really means to those who trust the Weather-Maker.

For after all, isn’t it with God, every season unknown; an opportunity?  All kinds of weather, made to grow, teach, direct, point us…directly to Him?

Finally, she screams.  I have heard it, this sound that shrieked loud, unrelenting those first months we received her.  A cry of fear, anger, uncertainty, desperation.  A cry that says, “I don’t understand”, “I don’t like this”, and “I am not in control”.

And don’t we all fear grace once in a while?  Preferring to keep our feet grounded because we think man’s safety is more predictable and logical than the journey God has for us….a journey unseen?

And yet, embracing something new in our world can be difficult when the terrain we stand upon changes, softens, or looks different from our perceived wishes and expectations.

Tiny tears start streaming, her child arms start flailing. I hold her close, knowing her heart is racing with the torrent of a fiery bull.  Seeing this volcano erupting, I know the heart-ache in a child, anyone, out of control.  Quickly, I race to get her out the cold, talk calm, try to reason with her that there is nothing to be scared of.  It’s just snow.

Grace sent down from heaven.  White, pure, perfectly covering this earth of dirt and darkness.  En-capturing the beauty of it all, absorbing the white, enraptured with a stillness from heaven saying, “All is well”, “Do not fear”, “I am here”.

And yet, a person, a child, anyone really who has been traumatized, fearful, or who has been hurt in the past….can unknowingly resist the very beauty God has given us, like grace.  Living “safe”, they can hide, missing the very thing God intended to bless us with.

Yes, how many of us run from grace?  Kick, scream, rush into the safety of those places familiar, comfortable, predictable, known; when God calls us outdoors to those places undone by the understanding of our own simple minds.  His blessings hiding in unpredictable places, that ground we can’t touch, the one we cannot understand or control, fields of white calling us to “more”. Drawing us forward by faith, calling His people to put their truth in Him, their very feet upon all that he has given us, basking in His grace, bravely facing the very God-given purposes He has placed in each of us.

Him coming to die that we might live.

Hi,, never meaning for us to hide.

And even more amazingly, we don’t have to earn grace, we don’t have to understand, or even “get” where this beautiful gift comes from.  All we have to do is receive.

I read scripture and see Paul pointing out his weaknesses, him declaring his imperfections, him boasting in how no gospel went forth by anything he ever did, really.  It’s all about grace, the glue connecting Him to Jesus.  And how every good thing He accomplished was by His might, His strength, and His power.

And yet, my little one needs silence, no one looking at, or touching her to process this gift of white.  I lay her in her crib to regroup her big feelings, her fear of grace, her unwillingness to embrace a world she has not seen, the pureness of snow that seems odd and unfamiliar to her previous tainted coping mechanisms and thinking….

I see crystals now as I write this, glistening in the sunlight.  And I think about how He did not die for us to isolate in our cribs of doubt and trepidation….

He called for us to run, play, embrace, roll around in His grace and the fullness of His love and goodness.  It’s what He died for.

So, I urge you friends today, as my foster child has taught us….the thing about grace is that you cannot demand, manipulate, dictate, or control it.  We simply must truth and step upon it, little by little, step by step, one foot at a time.

Will you join me in leaping out into the field he’s set before us?

For we are people not called to shrink back, but who were made to grow in grace, taste and see that the Lord is good, we were made to bask in the understanding of this beautiful life He has for us, not hiding in our minds or living fearfully with anxiety and dreams unmet.

Fields of faith lie open today, to us friends.   White, pure, filled with grace.  Will you joining me in opening the door, stepping out into the crisp, white, cold, beautiful journey He has called us to since the beginning of time?

Also, will you be praying for our little one?  She has been with us nearly eight months.  Many of you have read her story.  These next few months will be critical for what the future holds…not only for her, but also for us!  Thank you!