Life is not a nursery rhyme.

“But me, he caught-reached all the way
from the sky to the sea, he pulled me out
Of that Ocean of hate, that enemy chaos, the void in which I was drowning
He stood me up on a wide-open field,
I stood there saved-surprised to be loved!
…God made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him.
When I got my act together, he gave me a fresh start.
…God rewrote the text of my life
When I opened the book of my heart to his eyes”
Psalm 10:18-20

It was difficult to look away from her chubby legs and chubby cheeks. I closely observed how she clung to her mamma and wanted no one else to hold her. I am normally not a jealous person but I found tears well up as I thought, “it’s just not fair.”

As we drive home I just couldn’t hold it together anymore. “You know what it feels like? It feels like there is a deep deep cavern of love inside me that is sitting still…waiting to be poured out on our future children.”
In his usual calm voice he said, “We will…even if we adopt. We will have kids.”
“But, what if I can never give that love?” What if?

Later, I clicked on my Facebook and scrolled down to mostly see photos of babies in Halloween costumes, baby bumps, baby ultrasound pics, baby updates, baby videos and decided Facebook should be renamed to “Babybook.”

I guess I assumed my life would follow the rhyme, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.” Little did I know that a year after being married I would find out that while it is possible for me to have a baby…it would not be as easy as the nursery rhyme promised. After many tests and scans, it was recently discovered that I have a tumor in my brain (not cancerous) which is telling my body that I am already pregnant (and someone who is pregnant cannot get pregnant). We are still in the middle of tests, medications, and appointments so I still have hope yet somehow in the midst of clinging to hope with my right hand, I grabbed onto fear with my left.

People always say that when you let go of something, it will come back to you. That made me angry because I was not capable of letting go of being a mother someday. So instead of letting go, I wrapped my fingers, legs, and arms, around and clung on as if it were a rope hanging over a swamp of starving alligators. The longer I hung there, glancing down at those evil teeth…the evil teeth that wanted to devour me whole, and feast on my heart. I realized that I was alone and I was scared. I realized it was time to find a way to get my feet back on solid ground.

Then one day for no good reason at all I was driving home from work and had an epiphany. The Webster dictionary defines “Epiphany” as:
a. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
b. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.

My definition of an epiphany is the moment when your soul and your purpose collide.

I realized in the middle of this epiphany that by assuming my life was supposed to follow a popular nursery rhyme, I was stifling what was supposed to happen, from happening. Maybe we would have kids or maybe we would take in a child who was meant to be part of our family? Maybe I was supposed to continue with school, open a place where people could find healing? And…god forbid…maybe just maybe I wasn’t meant to carry a baby. After opening my eyes this felt as if I had been choosing to sit in a dark room when I had a whole house full of big windows. I was so focused on making sure I didn’t trip on the path I was on, that I never took the time to look up and see what paths I might have been passing up. While I have no idea what the future is, I am confident that making the decision to swing off that rope and land on solid ground will lead me to walk straight into the purpose I would have missed out on.

Grace like hot bread

Jason and I were given a bread machine for our wedding. Out of fear and intimidation, I hid it in the far reaches of my cupboards knowing full well the characteristics a bread-making woman possesses. Bread-making women are neat and clean, wonderfully patient, do not wear eye makeup, speak in a soft and gentle voice, and are wholesome to the core.

Recently, I decided it was time to step out of the stereotype I put myself in and begin trying to do things that hardcore woman have been doing for thousands of years. I even went out and bought every seed of every vegetable that I love and intend to plant them, watch them grow and make myself a salad. My first attempt at making bread went surprisingly well; in fact I loved it so much that I began experimenting with it every week. There is a deep satisfaction in creating a delicious loaf of bread that cannot compete with anything else. The smell of hot homemade bread permeating the kitchen shifts something in our soul. Pulling apart the warm outer crust, revealing the soft fluff inside, and waiting until the cold square of butter melts before it is devoured…provokes something in our flesh. Hot homemade bread represents what is good and right in life. It is meticulously mixed, lovingly kneaded, patiently waited to rise, shared with the people we love and satisfies them in more ways than one.

Last week I was sitting in class after a rough week. I wrecked my car in the snow and paid a huge amount of unexpected money to fix it. I showed up to class the next week exhausted, stressed out, grumpy and irritated. Class was about to start and my friend Christiana stood up faced me and said, “before we start class, I wanted to give you something from all of us.” She handed me an envelope and as I opened it in what seemed to be slow motion due to shock, there was a nest of dollar bills in the bottom. I was frozen with gratitude. My class heard about my car wreck the week before and put together their money to help me pay for my car. I couldn’t pay attention in class for the next few hours because God was speaking to a deep part of me...God sometimes speaks in the most beautiful ways. He speaks in a language that only the human heart understands. The week before, I felt disgusted with myself. Every word that came out of my mouth was judgmental and negative. It was like there was an overwhelming river of trash inside me and it just kept spilling out of my mouth. I prayed, “God, help me change.”

Jesus said, “Man cannot live on bread alone but on every word that God speaks.”

The envelope represented more than money, it was an old friend knocking on my door after I had long forgotten her face. I intimately knew Grace years ago but time and neglect had caused us to become estranged. I realized that sometimes we treat others the way we think we deserve to be treated. I wondered if maybe Grace had left me, which left me with none of her to give away.
Soaking in this undeserving grace, I wondered why the people I treated badly would give me an envelope of money. I sat there trying to put a picture to what I was feeling. It suddenly hit me that Grace is like hot bread.

When I first got a taste, I carried it proudly and tried to leave pieces everywhere I went. It came with an all-you-can-eat pass so I had plenty to give out. The scent wafted as I walked. People were attracted to this hot homemade bread because they didn’t get very much of it as a kid, they never saw it on TV, and some were just curious to try it because they had no concept of what it was.

The Webster Dictionary defines grace as a “mercy, pardon, clemency, an act of grace, the unmerited love and favor of God given without being earned.” Jesus explains it like this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.”

Bread fills our bellies but as I have recently been reminded...the words that God speak fill our soul. Grace is a place where flesh and soul meet. For now on, I will try to not leave the house without my loaf of bread. There are hungry people who may never be fed unless we are willing to share the transforming impact of what God says.