.When You're Trying to Figure Out Grace.

Our van bumped right into that familiar spot, and I wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared for any of it. I thought I was, but I wasn't. This time I wasn't scanning the sea of little brown faces and eyes for my boy, because he was right beside me. This time it was different - there were more shops than there were 15 months ago - but the difference this time was that I was looking at all of this through his eyes. And I took it all in, my eyes hungry for another glimpse of his life, and I swallowed it down bitter and stinging, because the truth is it was ugly and unfair and incomprehensible to the life I live and my other three children live back at home.

The dusty road meets the shops. They call it the post office district, because across from the little tented shops, where the street boys sleep, live, and gather to beg and sell gum and kleenex and tooth sticks or shine some shoes, is a tall building - the post office. It is busy and bustling and this time I saw that it is sad and heavy. People are drowning in the reality of poverty and dieing.

My heart lurched and twisted as I ducked out of the van, and I stared into the dark eyes of boy after boy after boy. Boys who were no bigger than my Scotty and boys that were almost men, all wearing rags - probably cast off from Americans who were appeasing some of their guilt by sending their used clothing to poor Africa - that hung on much too slim, dirty, smelly, scarred and beaten frames. Some had eyes so hard and cold that I shivered inside wondering what had happened to them, some were like my Habi was just 15 months ago - with hallow, dark eyes that shimmered with a ray of hope. I believe it can only be Jesus that keeps hope alive and flickering in any of those boy's eyes.

Anger quickly gripped my heart, and I tried to push it away. Anger is not what I expected to feel, but as we shopped and walked through the little district, and as I watched Habi shout greetings to friends and bump shoulders in an Ethiopian hug, I grew hot and angry inside.

Why?

Why did I have the luxury of being born in America? I am not any different than any of the boys except for the  plush zip code I was born into.

Why is it that just because these boys were born here do they have to suffer unimaginable things?

Why? Why? Why? If God is so just and so loving, which I know deep down that He is, than why?

I walked through the shops blinded by my hot tears, my heart racing out an angry beat. I could hardly breathe as boy after boy came up to me, palm open wide asking me for food or money or anything that would sustain them and carry them to the next day or even hour. I felt empty and worthless as their faces swirled around me. I cannot help them all. I can't, and it makes me burn with anger. It makes me burn with anger for the years of frivolous spending - those COACH bags that I thought were so meaningful and needed - how that money might have changed and even saved a child's life, the Starbucks coffees, which I still indulge in, they could pay for three meals for a child. Selfish. I am so selfish. How can I, who believes the gospel, just fall asleep every night in luxury, when these children sleep on cement and many will die never knowing the love of Jesus through His people and go to hell?

I caught the eyes of my boy. His eyes spoke a thousand words, and his heart read mine, and I closed my eyes and we turned away from one another. It was too much to take in together.

There was and is a whole community of homeless street boys just drowning in the life they were born into, and as I looked at them, I realized in the depth of my heart that God had only called me to make one my son.



And I was angry.

It hurts to do nothing. It hurts to feel useless when so many are crying out for help.

I love my Habi. I love my Habi just as if I had birthed him myself. He is mine. My heart knew it the moment our eyes found each other, but my heart also knows that he was not any more special than any of those other children out begging and starving to death on the street. Habi wasn't any more deserving of a family and a home and unconditional love than any of those other children.



And yet, God chose him for me.

But, just because those other boys are not chosen to be my sons, does that mean that I come back and pillow myself in the comfortable and not do anything for them? Who says that I should just leave the rest for someone else? Who says it is someone else's responsibility, and I have done "my share"? That tastes bitter on my tongue.

But I close my eyes at night, with my Habi safely tucked in a door down from mine, his belly full, his life safe, and I see the sea of brown faces. I have not forgotten. God will not allow me to forget the others.

One more. Can't I help one more? And one more?

Isn't His grace enough for one more? Isn't that what dieing to self, and taking up our cross looks like? Like reaching out for one more? Why didn't He give me one more? Why did I cover my eyes and sob into my arms inside the van? Why did I hide myself from connecting with one more?

I want to be like Jesus. I want my life to reflect the gospel.

There are so many more. So many more.

And I am angry, and it hurts, and I am pleading with God for justice.

Those boys could have been me, or my children. I could have been born into the middle of poverty in Ethiopia.

Except for God's grace.

And that is where I am landing - this is somehow all God's grace. Wonderful and confusing and perfect.

I'm still trying to figure out what that grace looks like and means for Habi, these boys and me.

 Because I can't forget.

One of them lives with me now, and is my SON.



I can never forget.

If all is truly grace, than what am I to do with that grace. Surely it does not stop here.

.Taking Back Grace.

Part Two: (Part one is here)

Growing up I watched grace being touted. I listened to the words salvation is by grace through faith. It's not from works! But then a strange thing would happen, once the sinner was saved, it seemed as if grace was erased and legalism took its place. I have written so much about one of my biggest weaknesses - fear. As an adult, and with hindsight, I can look back and confidently say that legalism breeded this fear in me. I am fully responsible for letting that fear penetrate my heart, but legalism introduced the fear to me.

Because legalism erased grace, I was afraid of letting people see and know the real me. Like most people in our kind of church, I became really good at the outward appearance thing - I wore a mask. I said the things I was supposed to say. I did what I was supposed to do. I threw on a mask of self-righteousness, and tightened it with fear and insecurity. I was good enough on my own, with this mask on to make me appear to be better than I was. Because when I looked to my left and to my right everyone else was wearing the same mask. I had to keep mine on, or I would never measure up. We were all plastic, or most of us were anyway. Most of us were pretty adept at pretending to have it all together, when really so many of us were falling apart. Because everyone is cloaked in these masks, we would look around and think in our hearts Wow, I am the only imperfect one here. I am the only one continually messing up. And we gripped the mask over our imperfectness even tighter in an effort to keep up the masquerade.

It wasn't until just a few years ago that God slowly began peeling off my mask. I had a lot of layers to peel, from a lot of years of legalism and pretending to have everything together. Each layer He has removed has revealed a new truth to me and brought grace crashing over me. God had seen through the mask all along -He could see through every messy, dirty layer, and yet He continued to love me perfectly, unconditionally, and completely. When it really sunk in that there is nowhere I can run from His Spirit, and that I could never escape His love or His grace, I started wearing less and less layers of that mask to church and in front of my brothers and sisters. Because I began to realize that measuring stick I was using of comparing side to side was all a mirage. I was comparing my mask to his mask to her mask. It was all fake. No one is perfect.

We all need grace, not just for salvation, but for life.

I feel passionate that now is the time to take back grace and erase the legalism that has permeated the church for so long. The only way that this can be accomplished is through Jesus helping us to peel away our masks, to be real, vulnerable, transparent, and yes, broken and imperfect before others. It is not an easy thing to do, especially if the mask has been worn for a long time. It's not easy to be vulnerable and exposed before others, when one has pretended to be something for so, so long. When we truly lean on God's strength and stop erasing His grace in our life, the mask doesn't fit well anymore - it stops making sense. And the truth is, as much as we think we are keeping up the charade, we always trip up and the mask always slips once in awhile. The charade is too much to keep up.

Today I am choosing to walk in grace, to erase the legalism, and to loosen the mask - the layers of fear and insecurity, because God has seen the real me all along. I am not perfect. My life is messy. I am broken in so many ways. I need Jesus, and I cannot live my life dependent on self and a check lists of rules. That leaves me empty. That leaves me fake. He loves me, and He has accepted me.

Will you loosen your mask today? I promise to cover you in grace, because He, who knows the real you - the you without a mask, has covered you in grace.

You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139: 1-4, 13

.The Grace Gift.

Her ear was the recipient of my whispered promises in the night, as I pulled the covers to her chin and tucked her in warm and deep.

Tomorrow morning. I murmured. It is then that we play and slow and cuddle and talk and be. Just the four of us, with no interruptions - no phone, no internet.

She reached her child warm arms around my neck and squeezed. Then she closed her eyes and giggled and anticipated.

And he and I snuggled in and rehearsed the plan again. Cementing it in our minds and committing to the empty, but really so full, Saturday, that lay on the other side of the sleep.

With the breaking of dawn came the breaking of rules.

Of hot cocoa with puffy marshmallows - marshmallows that mommy had hidden away from the remnants of summer s'mores.

Of jammied bottoms way past eight.

Of messes, of sweet stuff, of movies, of moments.

For in the breaking of rules we were able to romance our children.

And in the giggles and warm bodies snuggled into mine, and in the stillness crashed the knowing. Africa crept in and with it sadness for the brown eyed boy that was so obviously missing. Not too much longer I prayed, and he would soon be part of our Saturdays and our every days. The sadness hovered but was welcomed as it was twinned with anticipation, and the anticipation was tasted as painfully sweet.

But as quickly as I embraced the anticipation, guilt thundered in, and this is where I don't know how to be anymore. Africa changed me, and my skin hangs loose, uncomfortable, strange. Because the knowing the remembering of things and people creeps into every moment. The chocolate eyes of the widow woman with baby boy on her hip pleading for nourishment for him for one more day. The gratitude in the smile of the beggar as my husband curls birr into his bone-thin, sun-aged hand. They sneak up into our giggles - into our Saturday.

I don't deserve this any more than the gnarled and twisted man missing both his limbs that sleeps and survives on the side of the dirty Addis road deserves it. I have done nothing to merit this Saturday filled with warmness and food and family quilted in love. Guilt pounds at my heart threatening to break off another piece. And this is where I am learning what to do and how to live with the knowing. It must change me. It has changed me. It must linger and crash these moments of beauty. There will be moments when I must do something, be active, advocate and speak up for the defenseless - I am commanded to especially now that I steward this knowing.

But I am believing that maybe, just maybe there are moments even now - still with what I know and have seen - for stillness and cuddles and marshmallow kisses, for coffee and movies, and crafts and block towers. For it is in these moments that the knowing makes me see - for the first time with scales still falling off my burning eyes - the gift that I do not deserve, did not earn.

I need these moments, I need Saturdays - not so that I can forget Africa and the orphans that pleaded for the very thing I am in this moment enjoying. To forget would be as death in this life.

I need Saturdays to truly see that which I have been given and do not deserve.

I need Saturdays so that I can slow and still and savor the unwrapping of the grace gift handed to me. For it is truly that a grace gift - undeserved, unmerited. The guilt creeps out, the memories linger, and I embrace the grace gift of the moment, and the knowing caresses us all.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 2 Corinthians 9:8