Life takes a lot of grace, I've been realizing. I have found myself asking for an extra measure here and there. There are several different connotations and uses for the word 'grace', but the one I'm talking about is the one that affords peace and calmness beyond what circumstance may warrant. It's more than patience; patience is for the expected, for the anticipated and enduring the wait. Grace...grace is more.
I would say I'm decent at being content. While my truthfulness about my feelings toward any given circumstance may lead some to believe otherwise, I find it easy to be content. But I have a wandering heart and a wild imagination (thank God), so at times I struggle to look at what's in front of me, instead focusing my attention on what could be. Suddenly, seeing something that reminds my rabbit-trailing mind of another thing, I am spiraling down the rabbit hole of dreaming. I'm not opposed to dreaming (duh, I'm a dreamer, but stick with me), but I've learned that it can detract from being present where you are and hard to accept what comes - regardless of what you wanted to. Enter: grace. Lately, I've been beckoning a short-but-sweet prayer: "God, I need Your grace." Because when you want something to go a certain way but it doesn't look to go that way at all, it takes grace to handle what does come.
I haven't traveled significantly since my DTS in 2011, and for some reason travel is important to me; I can honestly say my heart yearns for it. The realist in me has learned to cut the pained-dreamer short in an effort to save from further tension. The reality of the present is that I'm at a job that God clearly placed me in and I'm wildly blessed to have; I can't up and travel even if I wanted to! Let alone affording it...
I flip-flop back and forth from being okay with being single to hating it...but never really loving it. Others want not to assume, but rather be nice by saying "If marriage is a part of the plan for you...", and to me the reality is: I know what I'm made for. I'm a people-person. I want to be a mom someday, and I'm definitely not good at life alone - not just romantically, but in the sense of total independence. Now, that's not to say that if I knew God was calling me into a life of singleness, I wouldn't just figure it out, but it would take all the more grace! All that rambling aside, just knowing it's a season of singleness, doesn't make it any easier. It's one of those things I do a lot of holding up to God, and asking for His input in my heart on it.
Being single when sometimes you just don't want to be, today - takes grace. Being stationary when you just want to go and see, takes grace. It requires something beyond patience, rather something to sustain me and comfort me in knowing that no matter what tomorrow holds, I'm headed there and following the Lord's leading. Even when it feels like I'm blind. Only by grace can I say You made my heart to crave these things, so I'll go where You take me, but need You to sustain me. It takes grace to say that right where I'm at is okay, even if I'm desiring more, and the more is big and is not easily come by.
My God is good, and He gives the grace...
