Grateful

Sometimes I am ambushed by grace.

Last night, my husband played the song "Stand by Me" on You Tube because it had been going through his head, and I suddenly found myself weeping. The end of the movie "Stand by Me," which I watched as a kid, says that one of the main characters is killed while intervening in a robbery. Fifteen years ago last month, I intervened when a man was attacking his girlfriend. She was killed, and I lived.

Last night, a familiar voice rose up in my head, saying that I should have died on the day of the attack, too, and that there is no greater love than laying your life down for someone else. Over time, that message has grown so old and brittle that it sounded more like a crackly recording instead of the booming voice of condemnation. It couldn't make me cry, but I wept when I thought about all of the blessings I've been able to experience during the last fifteen years.

Soon after the murder, I became a Quaker and married the man that I love so dearly. Later, I helped bring the world a lovely, passionate daughter and a steady, compassionate son. I was heard a leading from God to move to the country, and so I live surrounded by trees and fields, like I had always dreamed I might. Now, I am experiencing the holy and illogical fullness of late pregnancy. These are the most important things I've known.

I am so grateful that I've been able to live this life, and I am aware that the lives of so many others are cut short. They are present in the quiet corners of my existence, but their presence isn't condemning. If anything, they remind me to live with integrity and gusto, for their sake if for nothing else.

I am reminded, too, that to whom much has been given, much will be required. I have been given so much that I will never be able to give back even a portion of it, but I know that if I keep pressing into God, then I will be led to do what needs to be done. Grace has led me through so far, and grace will lead me home.