Grace is greater

I've been slowly reading and digesting an excellent book called "Grace is Greater" by Kyle Idleman these last few months. Normally I'm a speed reader but when a book is this dense with truth that I want to remember and incorporate into my life it's more impactful to read one chapter at a time and digest for at least a week. I think about it, ruminate on it, and generally consider how it can apply to my life. 

So I'm going to do a little gratefulness exercise. 

In the chapter "grace is more peaceful than your disappointments" he talks about complaining and its relationship to grace. "When you strip it down, complaining is a refusal to trust God and acknowledge his grace on your life." Time has given me distance from the repeated traumas in my adult life and years of therapy had given me tools to manage the emotional impact but I have yet to practice identifying the ways God has used those traumas to show grace to me or to those around me. "(Gratitude) recognizes that God's grace is reason enough to be thankful in all circumstances."

I'm grateful that my oldest child was born early in our marriage (despite our best attempts to avoid that) because that forced me to seek professional help for my depression. I'm grateful that her pregnancy catalyzed leaving my first job at an organization I could no longer support. I'm also grateful that pregnancy prevented me from getting a job I wasn't excited about which left me no choice but to instead go to wound care school.

I'm so grateful to have Abigail with us. At 8 weeks gestation I started bleeding and the ultrasound showed an incomplete miscarriage. Miraculously, God allowed his grace to heal the damage and give us the second child we prayed for. I'm grateful that I can now identify with the pain and help comfort so many of my friends who have gone through with early miscarriages.

I'm grateful for Shoshana's cancer. Believe it or not. 

Early in Shoshana's treatment it occurred to me that I could use this as a "do over." You see, I didn't get treatment for my major depression until halfway through Shoshana's pregnancy and I wasn't able to recover soon enough to bond with her as an infant. As a toddler she even showed beginning signs of reactive attachment disorder. Thanks to her horrible cancer treatment I was able to bond with my daughter in totally new ways and she became so much more confident and emotionally stable.

Judah, perfect Judah. I'm so grateful I got to carry him for nine whole months. I got to sense his emotions and he reacted to mine. I'm so grateful that he loved hearing his sisters laugh and even bumped my tummy at them, trying to play. I'm grateful that he never experienced sin or this broken world. I'm grateful that he went straight from my loving, warm, protective tummy to the embracing arms of Jesus without pain or suffering. I'm grateful I get to meet him someday.

I'm grateful that my dad stayed throughout my childhood though he had several opportunities to leave. 

But most of all, I'm grateful that God sent his son to a sinful world to pay the consequences for my sin. Losing my own son has brought me new perspective on how much love that takes. I certainly don't love any person in this world enough to sacrifice my son for them! But that's how much God loves me!