There are definitely those times when grace is like a wellspring: that rushing, pouring, splashing, laughing, relieving, refreshing flow.  I love that.  I crave that!  This blog was born out of that. 

But grace doesn't always feel like that. 

I have found that there are many times when I have to go looking for the grace - or I think I do . . .  I find myself weary and worn and feeling parched; too far away from where I belong; cut off somehow from the only Source that can sustain me.  Sometimes I wander off myself; other times I engage in interactions that, before I know it, have entangled me in such a way that I'm tripping down muddy roads, rolling down thorny hills, and generally making a mess of taking myself the way wrong direction.  Sigh . . . 

It's funny - for as much as I try not to sigh, I sure do sigh quite a bit.  Sometimes it's the best breathing I can manage.  Big deep breath, in, In, IN, fight for it - and then? Ooooouuuuuuuuuut in a big, long . . . sigh. 

Turns out life can be one big, ongoing temptation to sigh.  Frustration, discouragement, straight up rotten circumstances, and Lord knows everybody is some kind of tired. 

My little world is rife with difficulty right now: disease, discouragement, disagreements, and relentless disappointment are all playing their part to weigh me down into darkness and oh Lord, I am some kind of tired.  But here's what I know:

Even when grace isn't rushing, flowing, streaming all over everywhere in joyful gurgles and pops . . .

                                                there is always, always enough. 

It was Jesus who said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  If His power is made perfect in my weakness, then more weakness = more power!  I need to be constantly reminded that weakness isn't a raging pox, it's a recipe for power!  The less of me there is, then the more room there will be for Him.  Reminding myself . . . reminding you . . . (reminding myself . . .)

Some of you know exactly what I'm talking about . . . you have recently had to take yet another loan to pay for bills you thought would be well-covered by now, and the bills keep rolling in.  Some of you have had to pack up after the never-expected-heart-breaking divorce was finalized and you still keep getting up and going to work looking all around everywhere for just one drop of grace.  Some of you have had to lower your too-small Warrior into the dark cold ground and somehow keep breathing in and out for the other children all the while knowing what it is to not feel the grace at all . . .

Some of you are fighting the grip of fear as you await test results and the very blood runs cold every time the phone jangles nerves red-raw with the waiting and being afraid.  Some of you know what I'm talking about when I say it's often difficult to sense the running-over glory of God's amazing grace because you're just trying to make it through one more day thank you very much. 

Jesus, we can't take it!!  We read about a strong brave daddy and his two daughters in the prime of life killed in their home when a raging tornado ripped apart every safe trusted thing and how is a wounded mama supposed to raise their other seven shattered Treasures on her own? 

Big ideas are strangled little by little as we tear off page after page of the calendar; days passing, dreams perishing, darkness pervading as we take yet another step in what feels like the got-to-do-it direction we never exactly intended to go.  Hearts are broken and bleeding where no one ever sees the scars and some are just plum wore out with the ruthless every-dayness of every-body and every-thing that Never. Lets. Up.

We're tired and thirsty, Lord and we are dying for a drop of your grace.

Then I read from Isaiah 35, "Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, 'Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, He will come with vengeance; with divine retribution He will come to save you.  No lion will be there nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will not be found there.  But only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return.  They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.  Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away." 

Oh how I need to be steadied and strengthened - then my God will come and I have no need to fear!  Though the cancer treatments gnaw away at my littlest Lamb and I'm not nearly as brave as he is - still there is nothing to fear.  In the midst of all the other sorrow and uncertainty when I feel I cannot take another step, my God will come to save me.  My God will come to save me from my own weakness and failings, and to make His power perfect. 

Gladness and joy are in hot pursuit and they will overtake me and we will roll in the grass together with laughter bubbling up as the sorrow and even the blasted sighing will flee away, desperate to escape the scene where clearly they never did belong in the first place.  

This is a picture of God's boundless love for and protection of me, His redeemed and ransomed little one whose head He will one day crown with Ever. Lasting. Joy.  It gives me hope and it encourages me to take the next step.  My God is in control and His power is made perfect in my weakness.  Oh boy, no shortage of that . . .

There's so much I don't understand and I feel deeply weary in the desperate daily doing of it all but if there's one rock solid eternal truth I know it's this: when nothing makes sense and nothing adds up and the hearts are nothing but broken, Jesus is always, always here.

And His grace is always enough. 

I was at the craft store kind of spur of the moment.  I wanted to get in and out quick – lots to do – but as I approached the remarkably crowded registers, my thinking slowed and I began to see people. 

Really see them. 

The woman wearing a ball cap to cover her lack of hair from chemo; not one, but two women with oxygen tanks in tow… one of them carried a small baby on the other hip.

I was struck by the brokenness before me.  The pain concealed behind a thin veil of distraction - looking for the perfect paint brush; choosing dog stickers for the scrapbook. 

One of the tank-toting women had clearly smoked for decades but I felt no condemnation for her because it was standing in line at Hobby Lobby that I realized with a jolt of clarity - it is our own brokenness that crushes us further.  The crowded counter gave me time for conjecture: perhaps she first courted nicotine when she was only 15 seeking from friends the acceptance she had never felt elsewhere; maybe it was in college when she was stressed from working two jobs and making the grades; possibly out of the pain of abuse from a man who had promised to love her?  Maybe she just straight up wanted to try it, but once she did, the allusion of comfort took deep root and nothing punishes misery quite like addiction. 

The craving became a cruel master as the young woman's voice became gasping gravel.  Her beautiful face was etched deep with the effort to soothe jangled nerves, and the lungs hardened requiring her to carry her own air.  This added burden is her only prize for all the previous grief – she is literally dying from all her broken attempts to stop the bleeding.   

At clinic we see painful brokenness all the time but Lord, the mess we saw the other day!  Every single kiddo was dramatically ill and it was horrifying; I've never seen anything like it. Jesus, please have mercy!  All those little lambs, badly busted up but still looking at me and cracking a smile as I grinned too and tried not to weep . . .  My heart was so unstable already, I almost couldn’t bear it.  For some things there's just no help to be had from a pill you can swallow . . .

I even dreamed one night about brokenness.  Things kept breaking!  My wedding ring broke –  just randomly in the middle of the air this precious golden symbol fell apart and dropped off of my hand.  It landed in a huge trash pile, spronged all wrong - and why was I standing knee deep in trash?  Feeling my ring pop off, I reached, scrambling to retrieve it, going up to the elbows in filth.  That's not how it's supposed to be!  Other things were breaking too – cars, bones, everything was breaking.  I felt overwhelmed with despair by the relentless and pervasive sense of significant damage.

So what is there to do when the heart hunches heavy under weight I can’t see or understand, and the tears flow making soggy everything that seemed right and beautiful before so much brokenness?  Days when I can’t think straight or feel straight so Lord knows I can’t talk straight because it’s everything inside that’s crooked and sometimes I don’t know what to do with any of it.

Lord, it’s times like these that I can only fall on your grace.  I cannot “move forward” if I can’t move at all, yet somehow – if only I will remember to do so – I can fall forward to you; flooding you wet with my tears; and there’s comfort in having Someone there to soak them up. 

You know every last crooked place inside of me, yet you long to embrace me even when I walk determined down crooked paths; speak crooked words; see everything through crooked lenses.  It is perhaps I who am most broken.

Thank you, Lord that it is in my weakness, that your power is made perfect.  Your grace is sufficient.  By definition:

                                                 Your grace is enough.

Thank you, Lord, that you came to make all the crooked roads straight and the rough ways smooth. (Luke 3:5) Thank you that you are here to bind up the wounds deep in our souls where we are most in need of mending. (Psalm 147:3)  Thank you that you came to be our Perfect Lamb; to give your body to be broken so you could be "close to the brokenhearted and to save those who are crushed in spirit."  (Psalm 34:18)  Thank you for the loving compassion you pour out to the weak, wounded, and weary, for all of us are all of these.

There is a lot that modern medicine can fix, but so much more that it can't.  Thank you, Jesus that it is when we are worst shattered that you can best re-shape us.  And if we continue to fall toward you, the result of all this confounded brokenness will be that we are more like you in the end.   Thank you that those who look to you are radiant, and our faces are never covered with shame.  (Psalm 34:5)

May I be struck by the beauty of that . . .

The Lord has been showing me something really important and the Easter season is the perfect time to share it with you.  It's the final piece in a puzzle I've been laboring over: What it means . . . I mean, what it really looks like . . .

Dying to self.

I know it's important.  It's critical!  It's everything.  But I've been running laps around "what that looks like".  Maybe you can relate: I have to know how to "DO" a thing, or at least be clear about what my job is if it isn't a "doing" kind of thing.  Maybe it's just "being" instead or waiting on the Lord or maybe I have to try to . . . ?  Ugh.  In the midst of all the other debris floating around in my heart and mind lately, I was having a terrible time getting a lock on "what that looks like" in my life.  I mean, I get the general idea, but on a Monday afternoon with the monotony and a migraine and yet another misunderstanding?  Then I don't "get it" so much.  I have been feeling pretty killed and I'm pretty sure a thing can only be so dead.  Yes, well, God is showing me that there is more than one kind of "dead" and I get to choose which kind I'm going to be. 

When I mulled this over with a great mentor one evening, she said that being "killed" means there's nothing left in a thing (or a heart?) whereas being "dead to myself" also means being alive to Christ.  Aha!  So it's the difference between having "nothing left" and having "absolutely everything available".  I totally understand that!  That's where the three different powers in Ephesians 6:10 come in - and that is exciting!

But how?

Because did I mention I'm feeling pretty killed?  Does being dead to myself mean I don't care about anything?  It doesn't matter that I'm killed?  I don't care what happens?  I don't have an opinion?  She said, "Of course you care.  You care more than before, but you care about what God cares about!"  Yes.  Nice!  Thank you!  That makes so much sense. 

But how?

What does that "look like"?  What is the mysterious mechanism for moving from where I am in the land of Twisted-Up-Angry-Knots to the land of godliness, freedom, and joy?  How does a broken heart put skin on that?

Well, in His gentle goodness and perfect timing, God showed me the answer.  I don't even remember when or how the Holy Spirit eased it onto the screen of my mind but there it was; Jan Karon calls it "the prayer that never fails".  Jesus has already shown me "what that looks like", I had just forgotten!  It's in the five little words that changed the world forever:

Not. My. Will. But. Yours.

That's the magic.  That's the mechanism.  That's the miracle of moving from "Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me," . . . to Calvary and Resurrection and Eternal Glory - (not just for Himself but for me)! 

So now I will pray, "Lord, here's my thing (insert brokenness, hopes, desires here), nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."  And so then: humility.  And healing.  And hope!

It was Humility that was obedient "even to death on a cross", and that's what it looks like with skin on.  There is sometimes an anguish of actually caring quite a bit and wishing it was different and pleading with the Father to make it different . . . but if there is ultimately surrender and humility and obedience, then the Triumph will always follow.  I pray that by God's grace He will help me live this out in my home. 

And maybe it will change the world . . .

When I think of a wellspring, I think of water, don't you?

I think of lots and lots of clean, fresh, running water - not just a well, but a spring, rushing, flowing, gurgling, dancing up over the top and spilling down the edges.  Water, not just available, but springing up and bubbling pure and can't you just hear children squealing with delight as they splash in the life-giving water?

The Lord laid it on my heart to name this blog Wellspring of Grace, and I'm so grateful for what He chose.

When I looked up the word, this is what I found: wellspring /wel, spring/ noun - an original and bountiful source of something.

Isn't that perfect?!?!?! 

Water is life.  Without it, we could not survive more than a handful of days.  Not getting enough water leaves us feeling sluggish, tired, dried up and dried out; feeling sick and more likely to actually get sick.  The lips chap.  The skin peels.  The muscles cramp.  The tongue cleaves.  Without water, we would perish.

I love the way Jesus refers to Himself as Water we can drink.  He told the woman at the well, "...whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."  (John 4:14)  A wellspring we can drink right up into our parched and weary souls . . .

He said another time, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."  (John 7:37-38)

So it is too then that without Jesus, we would perish. (John 3:16)  He is our original, bountiful Source of Living Water and it is available to us because of grace: /grays/ noun - the free and unmerited favor of God.  When we believe in Him, we will have eternal life and streams of this living water will flow from within us too!  All of this is given freely in abundance though it is beyond us and completely undeserved.  Grace.

I pray Wellspring of Grace will be a place you can come to be refreshed by the bubbling up, bountiful grace of Jesus Christ.  Be encouraged, be inspired, be cooled and washed clean and above all, be filled with the matchless grace that Jesus longs to pour out on your soul. May it not just be available, but I pray it will spring up, spilling over, and may the grateful sounds of relief and delight be our own.

Welcome to Wellspring of Grace.