In Faith By Grace

I have a confession to make.  I can be pretty rotten.  I mean, there are days when I just get out of bed and the only thing that will make that day better is for it to be over and I can crawl back in under my covers.  I lack faith some days.  There are days when I can't handle another math problem, or spelling test.  I get impatient.  I get angry when "hospital" is spelled wrong, when we have spent so many days practically living in one.  There are days when I want to pull my hair out, or blow up my house because of the socks on the floor, or cheese stick wrappers haphazardly thrown on the floor instead of in the over-sized trash can, standing right in the middle of the room.  And then there is the laundry.  The never ending baskets of laundry, and mismatched socks.  I'm not sure why we have closets and dressers when my children seem to prefer living out of laundry baskets, and go barefoot.  Then again, at least you can close the closet doors.  I feel alone.  I feel like a failure at housekeeping, home schooling, and mothering.  I say my prayers and wonder if they are penetrating through my ceilings, or just bouncing off and getting lost in the dust on the ceiling fan.  I heard a quote once that hit right where I was convicted.  I'm not sure where I heard it or who said it, but it stuck with me.  "How can I go from being such a die hard Jesus freak in the morning, to somebody who is quite willing to put everything aside and walk away?"  I can be so like that.  I start the day off great with prayer and a good devotion.  I feel like Rocky running up those infamous art museum steps.  And then I start my day. The stress starts, the kids start arguing, disobeying, the laundry piles higher and higher with each princess dress that gets tried on, and therapists want to schedule a makeup session between swim lessons and baseball practice, history class and other therapy sessions.  Math doesn't get done...again. The life size sculptures for the renaissance history home work are in my dining room, sitting next to the large burn on the table from a science experiment gone array.  The Bible tells us all we need is to have faith like a mustard seed.  A mustard seed is pretty small. (See picture above)   Yet, I have a hard time mustering up enough faith to even equal the size of a mustard seed.  It is easier to just "walk away".  I'm a  visual learner, yet I'm instructed to live by faith, not by sight.  I even have a ring that I wear to remind me.  It's silver with "Faith" etched on the outside, and "live by faith not by sight" on the inside. I bought it to remind me that that was what I am supposed to do, so that my visual learner self could see that it's not about sight, if that even makes sense.  My daughter's middle name is Faith because my faith had been stretched during my pregnancy and her first early months.   My signature is "In Faith By Grace"!  I'm all about faith!  Yet, I struggle in this area.  It is by His grace, however, that I can find just enough faith to keep on keepin' on.  Grace means to get something that you do not deserve.  "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." -Hebrews 4:16  "Find grace to help in time of need".  His grace gets me through the spelling test, His grace gets me through the laundry, His grace gets me through the entire nogoodrotten day and allows me to sleep so that by His grace I can get up tomorrow and try again. It is the only thing that gets me through the day, and I am so grateful that I have it.  Without it I would wither away.  "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." -2Corinthians 8.   I have a lot of weaknesses.  But here is a perfect picture of grace:  after having a complete goodfornothing day, where I deserved a double timeout, not my kids, my daughter surprises me by baking me a cake.  She just wanted to make me feel better.  The middle of the cake ended up not cooking and making a cavern of goo in the middle, but it was the best tasting cake I have ever had.  THAT is grace.  "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." -1Peter 5:10  "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.  For by grace you have been saved though faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." -Ephesians 2:4-9  So, I live "In Faith, By Grace".  I am so blessed.