30 More Days of Grace

I stumbled into church Sunday morning a whopping 7 minutes before the service started, and I was feeling pretty good about that accomplishment.  I wandered over to my typical, might-as-well-be assigned, seat in the back corner and dropped my purse onto the chair, but before I could even sit down, I was intercepted by a great friend whose mother-in-law in the hospital with end stage vascular disease.  His wife has been camped out at the hospital with her mom for the last 10 days or so, and he was at church with the family and extended family.  I hadn’t heard an update for the morning, yet, so he quickly filled me in on the night and the exhaustion they all were feeling.  I’ve sat in that same hospital, in those same rooms, and even worked with those same surgeons, and as he explained all the things happening in that hospital, I felt that weight on my own shoulders from my own hours in their shoes.  Before he even finished updating me, a friend from bible study st...

Unarmed and Unprepared: I walked into the counseling office this week unarmed and unprepared for attack.  It was my own fault, really. I’ve spent the week ticking off boxes on my own to-do list and working through my own junk with my own counseling and appointments that I honestly forgot to think about what I would be walking into at my daughter’s counseling appointment.  But, I survived. See, sometimes I forget that not everyone I come into contact with on a daily basis has walked through the last 18 months with me. I forget that some of the people I come into contact with have done nothing but stood back and judged me quietly, while others have openly condemned me, and still others don’t know what to think, say, or do with me.  I forget that my circle is small, and that those people in my circle are truly the only ones who know the intimate details of my journey. I forget the other people who cross paths with me on a daily basis probably wonder what I’ve been...