I lean my body against the haphazard stack of pillows piled high on my bed, close my eyes, and nestle my precious sleeping babe against my chest. One glorious, cotton-candy cheek rests near my breast, one tiny ear presses into my chest, in sleep listening to the rhythmic thrum of my heart. We breathe as one, baby girl and lucky momma. Thank you, Father in heaven, giver of all things good, thank you for this tender cuddle-moment. Thank you for the miracle that is my little red-headed Emma.
Time passes. Baby girl awakes with a smile that says, “I am loved.” Jesus, thank you. Thank you for love that is recyclable, given and received over and over, breathable, exhalable grace-love.
“Mommy, Emma, you’re awake!” A joyful exclamation from the living room. Aydon, almost four, bubbling with energy, brimming with story-words, bounces into the bedroom, jumps onto the bed. My eyes imbibe the rosy cheeks, the mussed-up blonde hair, then meet the boy’s merry ocean-blue eyes, while my arms spontaneously unfurl to embrace the wiry, almost four-year-old body, that little body that stretches perceptibly taller each swiftly-passing day. Embracing, little man and momma, we share unfettered, payment-free, fault-forgetting, love. Thank you, Jesus, for the cross, for love unbidden, undeserved, unsought for, freely given.
Grace: love wrapped in a bloody and bruised body, sacrificed for you and me two thousand years ago. Once received, grace has one demand. Its demand is that it be given, poured all over our tiny ones, bathing them in forgiveness when ugly wrongs are committed, when hurtful, unkind, inevitable messiness manifests. To give such grace seems superhuman, and it is. Mommas, we must daily open our hands and receive grace from our Father, appropriating the gift of the cross: freedom from wrong thoughts and actions, from fear, from paying for our misdeeds, from guilt. In His death and resurrection, Jesus enabled the grace-giving that should daily, spontaneously, flow from us.
And as we consciously grace-cover our children, we will be surprised to discover love unshackled, love free-to-give, take root and grow wildly within us. And it will look something like this: “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)
Dear Mommas, I beckon you to join me on a parenting journey, a journey from grace to grace, a journey that, though difficult at times, we will never regret, a journey that we will not take alone, for it is one that our Heavenly Father himself takes us on.
Copyright © by Carissa Robinson | 1 comment
