In search of grace

Kara Tippetts on December 4, 2014

The story of my childhood consists of high highs and low lows. Sensitive before understanding what that word meant, I struggled for footing in my littlest years. I felt my weakness, I knew my smallness. Being raised under anger, the voice of the child is lost.

I was the youngest, the observer, the witness to so much pain. I muted myself before the swelling anger that filled our house and stole the peace of all who resided within its walls. The one that struggled with anger knew the least peace. No true solitude exists when self-control is bypassed and anger given full vent. It never accomplishes its goal. When I faced my towering daddy from my smallness, his beet red face, the spitting words at a fevered pitch, the screaming that was meant to correct only broke my heart.

Meeting Jesus, I knew my life was forever changed. Over time, I realized that I wanted to honor my parents and love them well, but I wanted to have the humility to live life with my future family differently. I slowly began to see grace for my parents. I desperately wanted them to know the truth of love that I was flourishing under.

Roles started to change and I was granted the grace to give love in the place hurt resided. I was able to love my parents, share honestly with them, write them letters of love and forgiveness. It felt utterly miraculous. Every chance I found I told my parents I loved them. Being recklessly loved by Jesus had untied my knots of bitterness and freed me to love in a way that was unbelievable even to me. I learned the power of our story, and began to look deeper into my parents’ own story. I could not change the past, but the future could look different. Love pulsed where it previously languished. Joy began to bloom from an angry soil.

I have had so many surgeries. Under my clothes I look like a science experiment. But I am no longer the scared little girl who struggled for love. No, I enter the scary and hard looking for grace, expecting grace, with face lifted walking in love unimaginable. Life is not as I dreamed it would be all those years ago. In many ways, it’s far beyond those dreams.

My littlest daughter, Story Jane, draws pictures of me bearing multiple scars. She traces my scars with her little fingers, and asks when they will leave. Story Jane rests her head on the stiff breast implants that replaced my softness and asks when I will return to my former soft self. My wounds from multiple surgeries bring her curiously close to me. Story Jane sees them, asks about them, and then lingers closely knowing only a fraction of what they mean. I think she knows the heart of what my scars represent, but her littleness, like my own so many years ago, makes understanding our developing story difficult. I could not know the heart of my dad in his anger because of the littleness I watched from. Story also struggles to know and understand the hurt in our story from the perch of her young age. She witnesses the tears, sees my baldness. But all she knows is the warmth of my touch, here, today, and the kindness that greets her in her living. She has found new soft corners next to me that suffice where surgery has left me utterly changed. What she longs for is my closeness, my touch, my kindness to meet her each cold evening when she sneaks quietly into my bed to be near me. She no longer asks for entrance next to me in the little hours of the night. She quietly enters by my feet and finds the warm curve in my back and returns to the comfort of her dreams next to her mama. Years will give her understanding like they gave me, but today, sitting next to my love is enough. The other day she proclaimed that she never wanted to leave my side that I was always the warmth she liked best. I said nothing, only snuggled closer with a hope for more days. More and more days of loving her. I want her to look back and see herself a daughter of love.

Miraculously, my story also had the freedom to be changed. I was able to turn over the authorship of my story to the one who knew how to best write my life. I could trust again, knowing the story wasn’t promised to be easy, but I was no longer silent in it. I was a beautifully redeemed daughter of the King, I would walk in grace. But what about you? Are you avoiding your story, embracing your story, living out of the pain of your past, or looking on the horizon for Jesus to redeem your hurt and walk with you in faith?