Grace

From the moment I received Kevin's phone call at 4am, setting in motion my part in Heidi's final weeks, God's grace poured into me in ways I've never before experienced and, quite honestly, didn't know were possible. 

As Heidi's condition fluctuated from hopeless, to glimmers of hope, to dreadful, and from there to macabre, it was all and only bearable because God held my gaze. I described this recently as God grasping my face like a parent might their child's chin in a moment of correction. In the ineffable grace of His gaze I truly lived, moved, and had my being. It took no effort because by His grace there was no looking elsewhere; only Him. 

As I wrote Caring Bridge posts begging for your prayers, I felt myself engulfed by Him. I had to rewrite a particular entry because His presence seeped too far into my writing and sounded like an earthly hope that we did not have. It was this journey through the valley of the shadow of death that plunged me into what is unseen, unfelt, unknown by far too many of us: His promises are true.

Two months on from Heidi's first week of hospitalization, the grace for that season is past and I already find myself slipping back into a life of lazy unawareness. Worse, the memories of all that was hard and horrible whisper despair, divorced now from the grace that first accompanied them and strengthened by a horizon without Heidi. My gaze is no longer held; the choice must be mine. But to recall the grace of God in that season is to once again feel His gaze - now asking for mine - and though that free choice takes effort, it's the only place I want to be. Come Holy Spirit.