It was 1973, my daughter was almost four-years old and my eldest son almost two when tragedy struck in a neighborhood not far from us. Breaking news came in the form of the newspaper thrown in our driveway every morning and the local news on a local station at six o’clock each evening.
A father had fatally run over his little toddler boy in their driveway. I went to see my Grandma Emily that day to ask her how a parent ever got over such a horrible thing? How?
Grandma Emily & Grandpa Harold
”Susie, listen here, honey, you don’t have to know. God gives special grace in special situations. We will pray you will never have to know that kind of grace.”
That wisdom and compassion came from an experienced heart. A heart and mind that had needed that kind of grace when her only daughter tragically died of cervical cancer at 26 years of age. That kind of grace when she sequestered herself in her ceramics studio for five years, having it out with her God and grieving away the hurt and disappointment and anger and pain.
I never want that kind of grace.
My heart wretches and my eyes cry over tornadoes, bombings, school shootings.
And I am amazed when I hear the stories that come out of the rubble, the amputations, the premature deaths.
I am assured that kind of grace abounds, over and over and over and over.
And, I am convinced, that kind of grace is enough.
xo
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