Grace in the Chaos

“My GRACE is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

            When I was growing up, I loved to write. I wrote blogs on MySpace, and then around college I upgraded to an actual blog. I loved that world. I loved to read blogs and see into other people’s lives. I was inspired by photography bloggers and mom bloggers even though I was in college. 

            When Matt and I got married and moved to Chicago, I continued to blog here and there for years. After having kids, I stopped. Tonight I looked at that old blog, and the last post was the pregnancy announcement for Caroline from nearly five years ago. 

            I have been feeling like I want to write again for a while, but couldn’t think of my “platform.” I couldn’t think of a catchy blog title. I didn’t know what my friends would think. I didn’t feel like I knew what I wanted to say. 

            As I have been contemplating this space again, all I keep thinking about is “grace.” As a mom to 3 toddlers, this is something I have had to extend to myself A LOT the past 4.5 years. I think that being a mother truly teaches us about God’s grace. Motherhood is a prime example of it. For example, today as I was trying to buckle in a car seat (already a situation that I kind of want to throw something) and sweating profusely as I was taking all 3 kids to church by myself, all 3 of them were screaming at me! Caroline was screaming “MOM! I’m coooooold!” Jonah’s seat was the one I was trying to fix. (Side note: Jonah is already my very fussy child. He is a momma’s boy and transitions and changes send him into an emotional rollercoaster.) So Jonah was crying and fussing and Luke was just yelling “NOOOOO” in his deep, raspy voice. 

            It was in this moment that I thought of God’s grace. I yelled. I yelled at Caroline and told her “IT IS 55 DEGREES ALREADY! IT’S NOT THAT COLD!” I yelled at Jonah to stop fussing and told Luke he needed to stop yelling no at me (as I yelled at everyone else). 

            The entire drive to church I thought about grace. 

            God’s grace is unimaginable. It’s something that I cannot fathom. Thinking in these crazy moments of parenting about how God just LOVES us. He loves us and extends grace to us as his children. We curse as someone cuts us off. Grace. We yell at our children and get frustrated at our husbands. Grace. We compare ourselves and dig deep into a self-loathing ball of shame and guilt. Grace. We sin. 

I recently talked to a friend who had asked me “Why Jesus? Like what’s the deal with him?” We talked a bit about why we need grace. Why we need Jesus and about how we are all just really crappy people who kept failing and failing and messing things up, and how we needed him to come and save us. GRACE! 

            All of this to say—here I am. I’m coming back to this space in hopes that I can share some funny stories about my kids, divulge some crazy stories about my life, and allow myself some space for a creative outlet to put some thoughts and ideas into words, all while allowing myself GRACE in this space as well. We all know this world can spiral out of control and lead down a rabbit hole of nasty, nasty comparison, which truly is the thief of joy (credit to whoever said that!).