Growing in Grace

by Monica Gambrell

Inever cease to be amazed at the love of our Lord. He is involved in even the smallest of events if we allow Him to be. When my oldest daughter, Rachel, was about 2 years old, she was involved in two different situations in which the sovereignty of God was evident. Every parent learns to be cautiously aware of what I call the “dreaded silence.” Now I would never normally put such a negative connotation on the word silence, but when an active child

becomes curiously silent, you can almost guarantee that they are into something they shouldn’t be.

On one such occasion, she met me when I was halfway to her room to check on her. She was proudly saying, “Yook, Mommy,” as she held her hand out to me with something in it. I was almost afraid to look at what she had gotten into, but I knew I must. She had “captured” a bumblebee! It was lying helplessly in her palm as she used her fingers just next to it to gently stroke it. In other words, it was as if she were trying to scratch her palm without using her empty hand. I was terrified that the bee would soon come to its senses and sting her, but it laid there alive and received the gentle stroking with all good nature. I convinced Rachel to allow it to fly free, and as soon as she stopped stroking it, the bee flew away!

A few days later, we were playing in the yard when Rachel came toward me again with the now familiar, “Yook, Mommy.” I was already dreading it. Between her tiny thumb and forefinger was a creature I had not seen before—or since. It was about the size of my pointer finger, more than three inches long and just as fat. It was limegreen with many fat stubby legs like a caterpillar, but its body was hard and shingled like an armadillo. I was stupefied as well as terrified. As calmly as possible, I directed her to put it down on the ground. We hurried into the house to find a jar with a lid and captured it safely to show my husband. By the time he had come home from work, it had sprayed a web against the sides of the jar and was trying to climb up the glass to the top. Aaaaaaahhhh! It was at this point that I thought I might not survive parenthood. I was deluding myself, and as our brood grew to include five children, I revised my thinking. Once things like this began to happen to one of our children on an almost daily basis, I knew that I was being strengthened. With God’s help I could handle anything. I even have a plaque in my kitchen that reads: “I can survive any crisis—I have children!” There’s a lot of truth to that. God knows what we can handle; He’s just trying to let us know what we can handle. I know that His strength is made perfect in our weakness, and He helps us to grow in grace if we allow Him to.

Philippians 4:13 (KJV).