My Story - A Bloom for Grace

This morning, as I prayed and journaled, I realized the date…

Some of my journaling and conversations with God this morning were of the sorrowful, disheartened kind.  I long to do more to reach out to and help others, while at the same time I’m feeling so ineffective with whatever reaching out I attempt to do.  I am filled with incredible joy when I can help someone else with what I have experienced and learned in my life.  Yet, I’m not sure of how much help I’m being and have been feeling disheartened about that, wondering if my efforts are being directed in the right/wrong way. 

As I pondered those things this morning, I realized that in four days, it will have been 27 years since I aborted Grace.  Here comes another dreaded anniversary of a day I wish I could completely undo from my past. 

My niece just had another precious baby and, as I observe my niece’s life, I am reminded that my daughter would be about her age.  I long to reverse what I did and bring Grace back that she may live life and have her own children and my grandchildren. 

Grace would turn 27 years old in November of this year.  27 years seems so strange to say.  Can it possibly be that I could have an almost 27 year-old daughter?  Even now, I wish I could go back and change it all.  I know I can’t and that it is impossible, but I don’t think I’ll ever (as long as I live on this earth) stop desiring to go back and change what I did.  I won’t stop desiring that I could go back, *run* away from that clinic, and face my parents with the truth.  Instead, I live with this regret and ache in my heart, while keeping this horrific secret from my parents.

I have lived for 27 years with the death of Grace on my hands and deeply planted in my heart, mind, and soul.  At the same time, I have lived 27 years in which God’s boundless grace has covered that awful act.  I am positively forgiven and set free.  However, it has not been 27 years of knowing, feeling, or even believing that freedom and boundless grace.  But it’s of no matter whether I know something or feel something for it to be actually true and real.  What’s true and real just IS, without regard for whether we believe it or not.  God’s forgiveness and grace through Christ Jesus is true and real and in effect.  And, in Christ, God’s grace covers every single failure in our lives.  I am filled with such love and compassion for others because I’ve been touched, held, led, and healed by His love and compassion.  I’ve been changed by an even greater depth of love and compassion, mercy, and grace than I could ever display.  Oh!  The immensity and greatness and majesty of God’s boundless love and grace!  How can I not share that with others?  Every time God has helped me, taught me, and led me in better ways than any human being on this earth could have…how can I not share Him and what He’s done with others?

As I began my day around the house, I suddenly took notice of my Christmas cactus.  My Christmas cactus doesn’t ever bloom at Christmas anymore.  The year before last, it bloomed for Valentines’ Day.  Last year, it did not bloom at all.  But this morning, I noticed it had one single bloom.  The bloom looks like it will open very soon in the next few days.  I looked all around it and that was the only bloom it had.  Immediately, I thought, “It is a bloom for Grace.  It is a bloom to celebrate Grace and the immense impact her life has had upon me.  Just maybe, it is also a bloom to represent that God is saying my efforts to reach out and help others will bloom when I least expect—all because of Grace, my little baby girl, and all because of His boundless grace covering the past, the present, and the future.”