By His grace

By Mary

I have a Bible study I go to every Wednesday morning. It started out just four of us at my house, when my girl was a couple months old and I didn't have a car to go anywhere. The other girl close to my age worked, and Wednesday mornings was the best free time for her. And the final two in our group were 20-40-ish years older, taking time out of their days to spend time together, to learn and encourage.

There's about 10 of us now every week, plus 8 kids 3 and under (with three more on the way early next year) We meet at church now and one of the loveliest ladies you'll ever meet volunteers to watch the kiddos for us so we can have an hour and half just to focus on the study.

This last week we ended up talking a bit about how God uses us as parents in our little one's lives...but how it's really not within our scope of power to make their hearts choose Him, seek Him, follow after Him. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot in every area of parenting, and just life in general: you don't do all the right things and thus end up with the perfect product.

One woman from church has told me on occasion how well we've trained Gianna. Those words mean so much to me, especially coming from her as she does see a lot of Gia from week to week and she works with kids a lot as well as raising her own. But I never feel it's a compliment to me. I feel so grateful, but it's always just a feeling of encouragement and a little relief, thankful that somebody can see the results of God working in our successes and failures, using and redeeming by His grace.

This verse is always on my mind "But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." Even in the broken places of my life, it's by His grace alone that I'm nothing worse--for what am I without Him? And His grace continues to lead to better things in the imperfect. And one day, what wonderful perfection awaits!