Grace is Chocolate Cake

Where to begin? I’ve been struggling with what to post, not because I have nothing to say, but because I have SO MUCH to say that I just can’t figure out where to begin. Have you ever been in a situation where you need to clean the house but everything is such a disaster that you literally find yourself wandering from one room to the next, thinking about everything that NEEDS to be done but not ACTUALLY doing anything? That’s me with this blog. 

There’s so much I want to tell you. I want you to hear about our amazing trip to Texas and how we got to start cultivating relationships with members of one of our supporter churches. I want to tell you about how sick I got during our first week there, and how God showed me grace. I want to tell you about the week I spent in California with my BFF Liz, and how God cared for me in a very tangible way by giving me a tour of the beauty of the west coast. I want to tell you about the house shows we played. I want to tell you a lot, but I’m having a hard time getting started. In order to combat this problem, I’m just going to jump right in and see how it goes. You ready? 

This one time, we went to Texas. And I got sick. 

The whole scenario was predictable, so I really shouldn’t have been surprised. We’d been going at breakneck speed since I got out of school in May, so I suppose my body was just done. When I started to feel a scratchiness in my throat on Saturday, I loaded up on vitamins and juice but neglected taking time to rest. We were scheduled to leave for The Woodlands on Monday, so I didn’t feel like I had time to take it easy. Then came the body aches and fever, and I knew a cold was imminent. Still, armed with painkillers and enough coffee to jumpstart a corpse, we struck out for Houston at 8:30 Monday evening. We arrived at 11:00 Tuesday morning, tired from the drive but excited both about sharing our vision for Freo AND about spending three whole weeks with Todd and Liz Crusey, who were our hosts in The Woodlands and some of our very best friends. I still didn’t feel well, but I’d traded body aches and fever for a cough and sore throat. In my world, this was improvement. 

By Wednesday the cough and sore throat had settled in and my voice took a vacation, which was highly inconvenient given that I was supposed to be talking to people about Freo. I took a ridiculous amount of ibuprofen, was prescribed an antibiotic, and prayed the whole thing would go away before our scheduled house shows and dessert gathering with the missions team. 

Cue Thursday: I was up early, having slept only two hours the night before. I’m not sure what kept me up. It could have been any one of the million kinds of over the counter drugs I was taking, but most likely it was my own destructive thoughts and anxieties. Let’s talk about those for a moment, shall we? Anyone else out there prone to destructive thought patterns after the sun goes down? Because I totally am. During the day I usually do okay, but once nighttime sets in I’m a goner. And on this particular night, my illness seemed to empower these thoughts beyond their usual strength. Normally my anxieties follow the typical “what if we fail?” pattern. I worry we won’t really make it to Freo, or that some disaster will strike my family and we won’t be prepared, or that Andy and I misunderstood our calling and really we should be pursuing research into the pollinating habits of killer bees or something equally obscure. However, in my illness the negative thoughts took a more sinister tone. Instead of worrying that we might fail, I actually convinced myself that we had failed, were in the process of failing, and that it was all my fault. I hated myself for being sick, because it is a sign of weakness. I hated myself for not being capable of hanging out with some of my dearest friends without fear of contaminating them with germs. I hated needing extra care. I hated knowing that my friends had worked hard to plan house shows and other events, and all I was doing was laying around. I’ll be honest and admit I spent a lot of time crying in my bed. If you know me at all, you understand the magnitude of this. I. Never. Cry.  

This all sounds a little dramatic for the common cold, right? I couldn’t agree more (for the record though, there was nothing common about this cold. I swear it was the bubonic plague). Looking back almost six weeks later, it sounds dramatic even to me. But at the time, those feelings were very, very real. Our enemy knows exactly what to say and when to say it. He specializes in lies, and is highly skilled in his ability to steal, kill, and destroy. He knew those feelings had been lurking in my heart already. He knew I’d looked forward to this summer as being the time when I was finally able to free myself from my Master’s program and start helping on the fundraising front. He knew all of those things and perfectly timed his attack. 

And yet, grace was there. It always is. When the missions team came over on Thursday night to meet us, I was too sick to spend time with them. The plan was for me to greet everyone, make my apologies, and then go to another room and pray that God would give them supernatural hazmat suits for protection. When this scheme was hatched, I prepared myself for another onslaught of negativity. What actually happened was much, much different. 

Instead of spending the evening tossing and turning on the air mattress, my friends changed the sheets and gave me their bed. Instead of listening to everyone hanging out without me, I listened to the witty banter of The Gilmore Girls (the complete series had been delivered from Amazon that very day). Instead of being lonely, I was joined by Shea Shea, my favorite dog in the world. Instead of being judged as being lazy (as I had judged myself), I was prayed for with compassion by people I had just met. In short, instead of being met with condemnation, I was comforted by grace. Rather than being overcome with feelings of uselessness, I was able to appreciate the extent to which I was cared for. Instead of viewing my friends’ compassion through the lens of self-hatred (“I am so worthless...now they’re having to do extra work for me”), I was able to be thankful for how much I am loved. 

I look back on this and am astounded at the tangible way in which God showed me grace. God isn’t content with “good enough”. Instead, He shows us grace in ridiculous quantities! I mean, my friends had worked tirelessly to plan this gathering for us. When I was too sick, it would have been good enough for me to have hung out in the guest bedroom on the air mattress. It would have been good enough for me to have spent three hours looking at Facebook, trying to ignore the fun being had just outside my door. But instead, I was comforted by watching my favorite show with my favorite dog. Also? My best friend brought me chocolate cake and let me eat it in her bed. For real, ya’ll. Good enough is Facebook on an air mattress. Grace is chocolate cake in bed. 

I’m glad I got grace.