Still a grace-filled daughter

Michael and I were in Florida this week visiting his dad, and while I was there I committed to spending some sabbath time in prayer overlooking the ocean from the balcony of the 7th story condo we were staying in. (It was really a burden to do this, as I'm sure you can imagine.) To aid me with this, I brought along the prayer journal I made last year for our Lenten series on prayer. I had only a couple of entries in there, so there was plenty of room for new prayers!

Funny enough, I had made my first entry one year and one day before I sat down with it again this week. Out of interest, I re-read my first entry in the journal. It was a part of the workshop we were doing on Ignatian spirituality. The presenter (my spiritual director) had given us a list of nouns, adjectives and verbs that describe us, God, and our relationship with God, and we were invited to pick and choose which ones best fit us at that moment to come up with a one-sentence prayer we could reflect on during a 15 minute period.

I was surprised and delighted by what I came up with:

Generous Giver of Life,

Your grace-filled daughter

hopes for joy.

Why so surprised? After all, that's exactly where I would have expected myself to be a year ago, just about to finish cancer surgeries. And that is where I was: content to almost be done, and grateful for the new life I had been given through treatment, but not yet completely over everything that had happened to me in the past year. I was still working on healing emotionally, working through everything that experience brought up in me, and while I was fairly at peace, and had gained some good perspective on things, I had not yet rediscovered joy.

But now, this little prayer spoke to me in a different way, as it is true for different reasons, so perfect it was as if this were some kind of prophecy.

"Generous Giver of Life." A year ago, the life that had been given or returned or both was my own, after two cancer scares. I was approaching earthly health and wholeness once again, with much gratitude. Today, the life I have been given by my generous God is the one growing in my womb - a miracle I can't seem to get over. Life is growing in me, where two years ago something grew in my body that could have brought death. Thank you, generous, life-giving God.

"Your grace-filled daughter." Not only am I full of a new life given to me and Michael by the grace of God, but if that life is a girl, a daughter, Michael and I have talked about naming her Grace, in which case I would, quite concretely, be filled with Grace. The reasons for considering that name are several. One is that it's a family name on both sides. But more significantly, at least for me, is that I feel like I/we are truly riding on a wave of God's grace. This is how we got through cancer, clinging even more closely to each other and feeling, much more strongly than anything else, God's enduring love. (How easy, how tempting it would have been to dwell on the wrath and unfairness of it all!) Here by the grace of God go I, and this pregnancy is such a testament to that. By no means have I felt entitled to it; it is given purely by grace, a grace by which I am constantly amazed.

"Hopes for joy." Here we have the humility that comes from recognition of the fragility of life. Of course, I want to believe that this will all be joy and sunshine, but I also know not to assume God's plan. Hope is trusting things unseen, and I do live in hope. I do hope for the joy I am anticipating. But in the end, I trust: trust God who has given me life time and time again, who has led and filled my life with grace in so many forms. Praise God, and may hope never disappoint us! Amen.