The flooding of Grace

After several weeks absent from my blog, I opened my own webpage and began to read again of Dandelion Dreams. On that sunny morning, I had just marked the four week anniversary of our miscarriage and the two week anniversary of Grandpa Bill’s death. My shriveled heart was due for a long soak in the rivers of His mercies.

Now, Grace has swept in again.

Not as I would have wanted or expected. I’m still going about the motions of life without real inspiration fueling my moments. I kiss my husband all soft and intimate. I go to the movies, watching the smuggled popcorn and candy disappear from my purse. I wash the dishes, dripping and soaking, for the umpteenth time. I laugh. I giggle. I groan in irritation. I wish my husband didn’t need three to four alarm clocks to rouse him from bed.

Still, the precious, sweet, short life that fueled my days is gone, and I’m empty. A deep, hidden place of my heart is still bereft. Oh, how I loved my Sweet Pea – just five weeks old! Inexplicable. Unfathomable. The emotions that were there and are now gone like a brief Spring rain.

I’m still drenched in the power of that storm that blew through. 

Yet, this morning I backtracked and read a several-week-old blog post by Ann Voskamp entitled “When You Sort of Feel Like You’re Drowning.” I’m struck by her observations:

“And she could see how the rain ran rivulets down through the field, through the rows, moving earth. She could see how every flood of trouble remakes the landscape of your souls – making you better or bitter.

There, at the south end of the barn, she could see how it started to flood.

She could see how every trouble is like a flood and you can either rise up on it or sink down in it – and if you lean the weight of you — of it all — on the wood of the Cross, you always still rise.”

So, you see, Grace has swept in. 

Not as I expected or wanted, but powerfully nonetheless. Grace has swept in to make the landscape of my soul more ready for the harvest that my Maker is still tending. Grace has swept in to keep bitterness from sending down roots. Grace has swept in to keep me alive and able to rise.

Grace is flooding, and I’ve got empty, desolate fields ready for planting.