The Grace Pace

I’ve been trying to find the words (and the time) to share my amazing testimony of how God really showed Himself to me and what initially inspired me to start this blog, but I keep putting it off. Not because I don’t want to share, because I literally feel like I’m bursting at the seams to tell everyone, but because I keep feeling like I can’t find a way to really give it the justice it deserves! This morning I realized that this is exactly the mentality that I pray I will be able to address in each of my posts and I hope that my readers can come to the same realization that I have had…. “We must learn to embrace the grace that has been given to us!” It’s really very simple. We tend to be so self- conscious and critical, that we hinder ourselves from sharing the very things that God has given us to share! So here is what God has been doing in my life lately.

Let’s begin with a little background story about what I’ve been struggling with. My daughter is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known and has so many gifts, but our relationship has been anything but smooth sailing. (Likely because we are so much alike!) We have good days and bad, just like anyone else, and there is no doubt that we love each other. But something is just off. I found myself caught up in a whirlwind of emotions and stress that caused me to have some resentment toward her that was unsettling, to say the least. I mean, who feels this way about their own child?! I began to pray over her and our relationship and I sought out friends to talk to. I knew she was struggling too and I wanted to be there for her and work through whatever was going on. In the meantime, I had done a marriage series in our life group at church where we took the test to discover our “Love Language” and found that mine was “Acts of Service” and my husband’s was “Physical Touch”. I’ve never been comfortable with touching or hugging people and I just wasn’t raised in a way that we really embraced each other often. It just felt awkward to me. But I see that my husband really feels loved whenever I hold his hand or just touch his arm whenever I speak to him. Small gestures. I’ve been working on being more outwardly affectionate and I did start to notice improvement in our relationship. This made me wonder if this same principal could help me with my daughter too! So I did the test with her and I could tell that she really enjoyed that I was taking the initiative and find this out. We found that her language was also “Physical Touch” and as we talked a little more about what that meant, she said, “Mom, you don’t really hug me and that makes me feel like you don’t like me sometimes.” I explained that I have been working on that, to which she replied, “you don’t really have trouble with my brother.” That is when I realized that she had clearly been paying attention and was hurt by this. You see, her brother is still a baby. He is carried just about everywhere he goes and I am constantly touching him, not necessarily out of love alone, but for practical reasons such as diaper changing or putting him in the car or even holding his hand to cross the street. Although she understands all of those things, she still felt some serious jealousy toward him and perceived the attention as extra love that she just wasn’t getting. So I have made it a point to be more intentional with her and hold her hand or ask her to sit in my lap. To be transparent, it consumed my mind and I really felt a lot of pressure because it honestly didn’t come naturally to me and I began to feel smothered.

Fast forward to the women’s retreat that I just attended a couple weeks ago. I had reached my stress threshold after about 2 weeks of my son being very sick, my car had been out of commission for 5 months and things just seemed to be falling apart more each day. I even told my mother at one point that, “Although I would never do it, I could certainly see why people who don’t know God or have any support, would feel like just giving up on life.” That was the lowest I’ve been in a very long time. Depression was controlling my mind and every aspect of my life. I attended the retreat mainly because I knew I needed the break and if anything, I’d be able to remove myself from the situation for a few days and try to gain some new perspective. (Plus, I had already looked at my insurance plan and inpatient mental health services weren’t covered, so that wasn’t an option.) So there I was, beaten down and broken, sitting on the front row with my fake smile, hoping that nobody could see just how depressed I was. I listened to the words and saw other women around the room share their stories and I realized that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t know how I’d fix things yet but I knew that I would surely get some answers that weekend.

At the end of the first night, I was grabbing my things to slip out the door unnoticed and go back to the cabin, when a lady approached me and said in a foreign accent, “I’m sorry if this is strange to you but I feel that I am supposed to come hug you and pray for you.” I was caught off guard and as I mentioned before, not too keen on the idea of hugging, especially strangers…but that sweet woman, who traveled all the way to the U.S. from Belize, pulled me into what felt like the first embrace I’d ever truly felt in my life. She began to pray and spoke of things that she couldn’t possibly know about. She prayed for unity and restoration in my family, my mind, my body. She prayed for health in my children and for sickness to leave their bodies. She prayed for the spirit of depression to leave. I felt so overwhelmed with pure joy and I began to cry uncontrollably. Whenever I tried to pull back and thank her, she pulled me right back in and said, “I feel I cannot let you go yet!”, so there we stood, embraced, crying like a baby, letting it all go. I apologized for getting tears on her face and she laughed and looked so closely at my face and into my eyes. She didn’t seem the least bit affected by the fact that I had basically cried off my false lashes and couldn’t catch my breath. I could tell she could feel my pain and could understand the weight that had just been lifted from me. I’ll never forget her voice and I have no doubt that this was the Holy Spirit holding me and taking away all of those burdens I’d been carrying.

Over the course of those 3 days, I was approached by 6 different women who didn’t know each other, but all said the same words, “I feel like I’m supposed to come over to hug you.” At this point I was thinking, “Okay, this is just too weird to be a coincidence.” I also thought, “My goodness…how pitiful DO I look?!” After all, I had been crying through each session the entire weekend. I knew that God had sent that first woman with a message for me, letting me know that He is here with me and that He is holding me. The other women coming up to deliver more reminders of that message just showed me that He is persistent in His pursuit of me and my heart. The first few times, I cried tears of joy and told them what had happened the first night and why their hugs were so significant. The last few I couldn’t help but to laugh because I was thinking, “Okay, God! I see you! I know You are here and I cannot deny it!” I felt like maybe getting all of this attention whenever there was a room FULL of other women there seeking Him, was a bit selfish of me and I began to shrink back from sharing the story because it just seemed too over the top or like I was bragging that He would just continue to send people to me even after I had received the message loud and clear! Isn’t it funny how we try to limit our God who is limitless?

I had shared with each of those ladies, and all of the friends I had gone to the retreat with, that I felt like my word for that weekend was, “Embraced” and I had even written it big and bold in my notes I’d been taking all weekend. I felt like I was taking home this beautiful neon sign from God himself and I held tight to that one word. I felt like He was showing me that He embraced me to show me His love so that I could go home and embrace my daughter and show her that I love her. I felt like I had been given grace and mercy despite how negative and awful I’d been for months. To know that He still loved me after I shut Him out and tried to handle things on my own. The hugs, the prayers, the word…that was ENOUGH. I was filled and overflowing! But God had more.

During breakfast on the last morning, I was sitting with a friend and coworker as we spoke about the weekend and she asked if I had gotten anything from it. I shared the amazing ways I felt God each day. I showed her my journal and my word He had given me. I told her of my struggle with my daughter and how I felt that “embraced” was meant to show me how to love her like He does. She prayed with me and God gave her a word during that prayer that, “my daughter has a divine purpose and I must love, protect and guide her so that she may walk in faith and fulfill her great purpose.” Soon after, another lady I’d not met, came to me and asked to pray with me. She spoke so boldly and said almost exactly what my friend had just prayed! She said, “God wants to tell me that I am more than just a mother but a PROTECTOR and that the enemy wants desperately to break the bond I have with my daughter.” Wow! What an amazing confirmation that He knows all and He is working on my behalf. I had not told my friend all of the details and I certainly hadn’t told this stranger about my family issues.

I left breakfast and entered the next session of the retreat and wrote down those prayers in my journal so I could remember their words and pray them over my daughter every day. I told my two close friends who sat next to me about what had just happened. I was in a state of shock at that time as I tried to process everything and make connections between it all. As we broke for lunch that day, I found another friend and coworker and we spoke about our weekend. I shared all that God was telling me through these women and I shared that I had been at my lowest point and that depression was prevalent in my home. I shared what I told my mother about understanding how people who don’t know God, or have people to reach out to, could give into the lie that suicide is the only way out of the hole. As we shared together and spoke about all of these things and how they had impacted our lives in one way or another, another woman approached our table and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt you girls but I have something for you.” I jokingly said, “Is it a hug? Because I have been getting lots of hugs.” She had kind of a surprised look on her face and I explained that God had sent 6 women to hug me and even more just to pray very specific prayer over me and my family. She said, “I’ve had this in my car for several months and prayed that God would show me who I was supposed to give it to. I saw you today and He said, “that’s her.” So here, this is for you.” It was a devotional book written by Lysa TerKeurst titled, “Embraced”. I looked at my friend with tears in my eyes and her jaw was on the table too. I explained to the woman what it meant to me and I showed her my journal where I’d written that word boldly the day before! She appeared to be just as in shock as we were. I thanked her over and over for the gift and for allowing God to lead her to me. I pray that she knows just how grateful I am and how much those devotionals have been tailored for me in the past two weeks. We finished out the day and as the retreat came to a close, I felt like I could literally feel my heart overflowing! I felt like hugging everyone who passed me and I was smiling like a kid on Christmas morning. If only there were a side by side shot of me entering that room for the first time and when I was leaving! Changed is not even an adequate expression of what took place there. (If you have never read Hebrews before, I strongly encourage you to read and study it! )

Outside, we all said our goodbyes and prayed and fellowshipped a little before everyone went their own way. There, I was given a tiny jar that contained a Sequoia seed to give to my daughter. Seems pretty insignificant, right? Not hardly! This lady had no way of knowing my story or that I refer to my daughter as, “my tree”. She couldn’t possibly know that we had planted a tree last summer as we embarked on our first year of homeschooling together, that will grow with her as we planted our roots and water our minds with education and the Word. She couldn’t have known how amazingly significant that seed was and how that further solidified the words spoken to me and over my daughter that weekend. She shared some facts about the seed and what makes it so important and amazing. She spoke of the seed but I heard those words for my daughter. My tree.

I wandered over to a group of friends who had been praying with another lady who was about to share her adoption story. She read a letter from one of her girls that, by no coincidence, had the same name as my daughter! She read, “Hi my name is Rylie (spelled differently than my daughter’s) and my name means “PROTECTED ONE”…….” What?! Her name means protected one? You mean, like those two prayers that those ladies came to me to pray? How is this possible? God had managed to use over a dozen people to reach me that weekend. How can I doubt that He is for me? So I came home and couldn’t wait to share all of this with my family, especially my daughter! She is only 7 but she fully understood and cried as she said, “He did all of this for……ME?”

So here I am. Equipped. Restored. Healed. EMBRACED.

I decided to use my gift of expression and writing to share the amazing story of how He lit up the darkness to find ME. How he seemed to “leave the ninety-nine” (more like 199 other women in attendance) to chase after ME. (Not that he “left” them, but He certainly made me feel singled out and significant!) He showed me that I am worthy of His grace and that I just have to accept and embrace it. (Hints the name: “Embracing Grace”) And I feel like He is leading me to share the beautiful things He puts on my heart so that they may be shared with others like me…searching for more, but are broken down by stress and depression. So thank you for taking the time to read my rather long testimony and I pray that my posts will inspire you or someone you love. I am thankful for my friends and family who are always there to help lead me back to Him, no matter how far I may stray.

Many hugs and blessings,

Brittney