when i was 19 in school i um you know i went away to college and actually you know and i
hate this because people always assume it's the proverbial pk kid wiling out
you know what i mean and i wasn't wild and i wasn't disobedient i was actually
a goodie two shoes and wanted to be but we all make mistakes and so i went to the same college
that my high school sweetheart went to and that wasn't smart so i ended up having my first child
in college i was 19 years old the pastor's child girl and then everybody you know it's kind of like
um you know how did this happen and what did y'all do and i just kept looking at them thinking
it's not a formula like it's not you know but i do recall having multiple moments where there were
people from our church i actually have a binder of a scrapbook of all the cards that i saved
from people sending me cards of encouragement and so many of those cards had women saying
let me tell you about my story yeah you know let me and these were women i'd grown up with that
they were singing in the choir or in ministry and i i just was kind of like it was kind of like my
ticket to find out about all the grace everybody else needed i was reading those cards like uh-uh
but i just remember thinking about i was so not focused on waiting on the beatdown to come
in my life because i was extended such grace by people being the hands and feet of jesus in that
circumstance and that was the in the beginning of my 20s and multiple times in my 20s just trying
to find my way grace god gave grace upon grace upon grace but at this point in my life i i see
what we look at for those shocker moments you know that this is what jesus did this is how i came to
grace this is how god rescued me and i see so many moments of grace and they all look the same to me
you know we look for these moments where god had to rescue us and these stories right like a good
story but when you've walked with god long enough you see that this grace is it's not a moment it's
not a storm it's not a it's not a flood it's a constant trickle of a stream of grace that he's
offering to us all throughout our lives um a few years ago my husband had some challenges with his
health and i was in corporate america in my 20s and my 30s i stayed home with kids and that was
i was good that's where i want to be yeah so when he ran into those health challenges and we had to
figure out okay where's the money coming from i didn't have a plan for that you know right i
do remember thinking i went to college i got a degree i'm sure i can figure something out
but what god has done in my life um in in a ministry way wasn't i wasn't aiming for that ever
actually um didn't wasn't interested in that but what god did to order steps even in that i
remember my dad coming to me and saying um because when he was writing there was a book he was
writing for women and he wanted me to help him out with that and i said oh no i'm not doing that and
he said why i said well first of all i don't want anybody to think that any prescription that i put
in here is because i've done it all right i don't even want to pretend to be that person that's
number one number two is ain't nobody got time for that i don't have time for that i had college-age
kids in kindergarten at the same time and then he said to me don't you already write well i
always loved to write so it was just something i would do for myself in journals or on a blog
so aiming to even write aim to be aiming to be in a ministry aiming to i wasn't even aiming for that
so when people say what does grace look like in your life i can say it looks like him rescuing me
from making decisions i didn't need to be making but it also looks like him providing for me for
him giving me a place to work alongside my parents in ministry for him to take what i was doing all
that time that i had no intention of using and for him to say this is what i have it's been grace
upon grace upon grace and the beautiful thing in my mind about walking with god is that if you'll
just walk with him that he has this effervescent flow of grace upon grace upon grace upon grace
and you don't have to have some crazy great story of grace for you to see his grace at
work in your life i'm so curious what does grace look like for you whether it's been that moment
or whether it's been this grace upon grace upon grace his steady grace at work in your life
i mean for me it was a moment like i had a huge rock solid moment where like i hit rock bottom and
here came grace and it was max luca wrote a book about grace and he talked about how it was wave
after wave and i that's how it reminded me i just always think of grace as like the ocean
like the wave that comes in after another wave that comes in so for me it was a huge moment
but i was kind of like you except i believe the opposite i always thought well my mom
her testimony is i think she might have stole bubble gum when she was a kid like she's been
the goody two shoe perfect child everything my dad was like the total opposite you know and he shared
his testimony and everything but he was just and i would hear his testimony i would see all these
people coming to get saved and i remember thinking i've got to create a testimony and so i remember
even in my bad days going well at least i'm creating a testimony because i love jesus so much
like i knew it i knew he would one day use it but it was like i justified my sin because at least
i'm creating a testimony like it's good to go right and so like that was the weight i actually
remember when i did get saved dad and i had this conversation and he kind of changed how he talked
about it because in our world and in church it's over celebrated that one instead of the person
yes instead of the faithfulness instead of the grace to keep you yeah like that's yeah
the keeping race and i feel like that's my story because i for like you i felt like i had to make
up one right because in the 80s you know we're old people in the 80s i'm just looking at youtube
like the thing you the people that were on the stages had these big yeah absolutely drug addicts
or get you know the whole thing and i'm just like i i parked in the handicap only parking place
i mean like i didn't have that so i felt like i had to like make it up
and so until i feel like god challenged me and said didn't my grace keep you yeah keep you yeah
so there is an element of keeping grace so so even when you have the hard really challenging
moments and you've had them and i'm looking forward to hearing about that and still the rest
of your life has to be the keeping grace right right so the rest of our story has to be god's
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