Of Change, Broken Bowls, and God’s Grace

Change isn’t always easy. Or perhaps better to say—is change ever easy?

This past year has held incredible life changes for Anthony and me. Being engaged . . . getting married . . . moving . . . starting to teach high school (for me) . . . the sometimes wonderful, sometimes stressful task of combining two very different lives and people into one. Plus handling broken faucets and invasions of insects and those other lovely things life likes to throw at us.

That doesn’t mean it’s not good. And sometimes it’s good because it isn’t easy…for it’s not so much the easy places of life that God uses to shape us, is it?

And Anthony and I keep learning to live together, learning to love. Learning to listen, and forgive, and dig deeper and further in, and come before the Lord together, and listen and forgive again.

I’ve started to read, again, Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, and I’m nearly all the way through this time, though it’s a book to digest bit by bit. (If you haven’t discovered Ann Voskamp yet, please do.) It’s a book that impacts me deeply, reminding me over and over of His grace everywhere, and of the power of being grateful for it. I’ve started writing my “gifts” down again too.

Sometimes emotions rise easy to the surface, in seasons of change. Sometimes it’s really hard. But there’s His grace . . . always His grace.

One night a few weeks ago, after a long day for both of us, Anthony had discovered I’d somehow put several fresh scratches in the smooth wood of our dining table, one of the few pieces of furniture we specially chose together for our home. And while I was struggling with the fact that I had yet again messed something up and couldn’t fix it, and he was trying not to be too frustrated, and we were trying to enjoy the yummy enchiladas he’d made and a Dr. Who episode when we were both rather exhausted, I went for seconds of potato salad and dropped the whole bowl in a smash of enamel fragments and salad dressing on the kitchen floor.

And at that point, the tears came.

Anthony was kind and picked me up out of the splinters in my bare feet and helped me clean it up. And I laughed through my tears at how I could break what had been marketed as an unbreakable dish, and somehow the rest of the night didn’t seem so bad anymore.

I’m thankful for grace—from others, and especially from the Lord. I need it, so much, every single day. There are so many ways I fail, and forget, and don’t live up to all the things I think I should be and do.

But I guess that’s no surprise to the Lord…since He sent Jesus.

This hymn has often come to my mind, as it has before in seasons of change:

“Leave to thy God to order and provide

In every change, He faithful will remain…
Be still my soul; thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as He has the past…”

So thankful I am, that He always, always faithful will remain.

How about you? Are you dealing with change in your life right now? How has the Lord reminded you of His grace? Please comment and share!

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