She’s still tiny enough to fit on my lap, so I embrace her, warm and snug against me, on a chilly Iowa morning. We look out the window, the one with the word PRAY on the sill. Overnight, our trees played dress up; they’re all wearing lacy-white robes and pearls, courtesy of a light snow.
The winter air is still. Not a single branch moves. I slow to the hushed rhythms of the world, and inside, I hold this one beautiful moment in my arms. I wrap a single tendril of my daughter’s hair around my index finger. And she’s got all of me wrapped around hers.
“I thank God for you, Anna,” I tell her. “You know that? I thank God for you every day.”
“I thank God for you, too, Mommy,” she says in a hoarse morning whisper. Her legs dangle over the arm rest, and I hope she’ll never outgrow my embrace.
“I wonder why God would give me someone as wonderful as you,” I tell her.
I shake my head over astonishing grace, making itself known in the simplest of life’s moments. Stilled by the extraordinary beauty of a quiet “ordinary” morning, I cannot get over the God of our immeasurably mores. Life on Earth can be downright hard sometimes — with unpaid bills, unchecked boxes on the to-do list, unforgiveness, unrelenting illness.
But I can look around my ordinary life, and see sheer grace shining up all around me. I can see how He’s given me more than I ever dreamed.
My daughter cups my chin in her hand, blinks her eyes and preaches a mini-sermon from a living-room pulpit.
“I know, Mommy,” she says. “I know why God gave me to you.”
I raise my eyebrows, listening to the child preacher.
“It’s because you asked.”
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-12
Have you experienced a time in your life where God blessed you with immeasurably more? Where in your life do you need God’s promise of immeasurably more today? How can I pray for you?
