Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Bathed in Grace




Last Sunday I had the privilege of receiving copious quantities of grace. It was very beautiful. I’m not certain words could adequately describe the feeling, however, I won’t let that hinder my attempt at sharing it.



I was not feeling tip top, and Gregg suggested I leave a bit early from church and head straight for a relaxing bath. I dutifully got home, ran upstairs, and started the bathwater. I then had the brilliant idea to run downstairs and get the chicken started for lunch...



The pan I needed hadn’t been washed after breakfast, so I cleaned it up quickly, and, having aroused Schnitzel, “tended” to him. Returning inside, I grabbed the jug of oil and notice that it had been leaking…..quite a puddle actually. I began wiping it up, only to discover that it had dripped under the wall….having no trim on the wall leaves a rather wide gap. So I began trying to mop the oil out from under the wall, swishing out large amounts of said liquid with each swipe. I began to panic, ”Oh no! This is going to wreck the walls…the MDF board on the other side…..Yikes!” I continued wiping until the oil stopped coming up in such large quantities (1/4 cups..or at least several tablespoons w/ each swipe!) Finally, there wasn’t as much, so I got a rag stuffed under the wall hoping it would serve as a wick. I was frustrated. Deciding I would skip the bath, I headed upstairs to finish changing clothes. As I got to the top of the stairs, I heard water running. ”OH NO! I COMPLETELY FORGOT THAT I HAD TURNED THE BATH ON!” I ran to the bathroom – now containing a 6 ft. wide waterfall flowing smoothly over the edge of the tub – I waded in, opened the drain, and began the mop up job…..crying..…..

As it turned out….the ceiling is now off of a pretty good portion of the great room. We are relatively dried out…and life is continuing.



My wonderful husband has had nothing but good to say about the incident! He says, “Oh look, Keri, we can put some lights into that area now!”, “This will be great, Keri, now I’ll get a sheet rocker out here to do this little job and the ceiling…I would’ve put it off for a LONG time if we didn’t have the ceiling to repair and the house will look so much nicer with this little trim job done.” He also declared that there would be no bathtub jokes for a week – that had to be hard!



My children were also VERY gracious! I would’ve NOT been gracious had they done the same thing! Well, now maybe I would!



We had some people over that very evening….they were only helpful and gracious…I was in tears.



Humility? Yea…I have been humbled a bit. But mostly I am overwhelmed by the graciousness of my husband and family! How indescribable is the feeling of such grace extended to me…….And to imagine this is over an overflowed bathtub…..



How does one grasp the grace of God???….Words are completely inadequate!