My Dearest Sister,
The topic this month holds a special place in all of our hearts; for without God’s amazing grace you and I would still be lost in our wretched sinful selves, without hope! Praise God for His mercy and love which He has so graciously lavished upon us and has allowed us to be called “His children”!!! Praise Him, Praise Him that it is so by no merit of our own!!!
My heart’s desire in writing you this letter is to share with you a time when God’s grace came to me and my family in an unexpected even unlikely manner. It was such a small thing in the grand scheme of things as they say. The grand scheme, if you will, was my daughter’s life long battle with seizures. She was 14 at the time and had just undergone brain surgery where a neurosurgeon severed the right hemisphere of her brain from the left hemisphere. The journey our family traveled to that moment was strenuous and filled with many tears. Just when it seemed things would calm down to a point where growth could take place those nasty seizures would show their ugly head again to disrupt any progress that had been made in our daughter’s life.
Don’t get me wrong, our path was definitely sprinkled with joy as well along the way. However, most days held a quality of oppressive uncertainty to it. Eventually we made it to a group of Dr.’s that could see the problem and offered a solution that promised (albeit a very slim promise) an end to her besetting seizures. Test upon test led her to an operating room where for six hours we heard very little….and then finally: all went well, she is stable, the permanent separation was complete.
In the ICU we were told the next 24 hours of her recovery would be critical to the outcome of the surgery: she could reject what just took place, she could start to seize again, she could bleed out in her brain causing irreparable damage, she might not wake up for days…the list went on. It was late in the day when we began to see signs of her waking up, but no one wanted to rejoice for after all that little bit of hope might be fleeting! All the emotions that had been set aside in the making of the decisions that brought us there to that moment seemed to well up and over flow all at once, uncontrollably we wept. Then, in came the nurse who would be caring for her through the night. I cannot even recall her face although when she smiled I got the sense that something unforgettable was about to happen. She said “Hello, my name is Grace….” I do not even recall anything else she said!
For those of you who know me well, you know that I am not one to read too much into ordinary things, nor am I someone that reads between the lines. However, at that particular moment I knew without a doubt that God used this sweet nurse’s name to speak peace into my heart when my heart was tempted to doubt Him and all the lovingkindnesses He had shown us up to that time.
As her name was spoken my heart recalled that it was by God’s grace that my daughter had even survived beyond the first trimester of gestation and the stroke that took place, it was by God’s grace that her condition was discovered when it was, it was God’s grace that sustained her life and ours and that allowed us to always look beyond all the medical prognoses, it was by God’s grace that Olivia’s God given personality was protected and reserved for a time when all the seizures would be gone and the medicines would no longer play a part in her life, it is by God’s grace that He taught me the sweetest, deepest things of Himself through Olivia’s life!
I pray that this simple recollection of mine would help to open your eyes and your heart to God’s grace for you today! Do not let the small things in your life that take place slip by without seeing His gracious omnipotent hand!
“My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply…”
~Susan