nothing but grace

Just like always the weekend had sped by too fast and Monday morning was looming all too closely on the horizon. Time to get back to homework and classes. Back to the world of stress and the sometimes mundane chore of schoolwork. Except it wasn't the end of an ordinary weekend. It was the end of the last weekend.

No more weekends left to ambitiously plan to get homework done and then almost every time fail dreadfully and get nothing done. No more weekends to randomly walk about the town friends. No more Sunday nights of furiously trying to get homework done that could have been done on Friday.

It was Sunday night and graduation was 6 days away. The last day of classes was 3 days away.

I thought about this in the blessed quietness of the storage room. Wedged between totes filled with an exorbitant amount of earthly belongings I realized the week I had looked forward to for so long was finally here.

It's the week where I will get to see my family after 4 very long months. It's the week where the seniors will party every day.

It's the week I will walk across a stage and get a diploma. A piece of paper with my name in big bold letters. As if I could have accomplished any of my schoolwork by my own merit.

I'm weak. I can't grasp concepts quickly. I learned to read finally after my mother threw phonics out the window. I barely passed Algebra. I couldn't diagram a sentence if my life depended on it.

By the grace of God I had the courage to come to college. By the grace of God I stayed at college. Only by the grace of God will I graduate from college in just a few days.

Grace.

In the last three years it has become practical to me in a whole new way. When I stared at a bunch of dates for church history test wondering how I would remember them when I didn't even know the dates of my own siblings birthdays; the grace of God carried me.

The grace of God was there when I didn't have the time I normally needed to study.

God's grace taught me and grew me spiritually in ways I never thought possible.

I know, I know that I have written about the grace of God a lot, but I'm sorry I'm not going to stop. If I get tired writing about the grace of God go ahead and tell me something is very wrong with me.

Maybe I just do see God's grace in the very little things, but if I don't see God's grace in the little things how will I see it in the big things?

I have the sudden urge to mark my forehead in big black letters with the word Grace for my grad day. Fitting don't you think?

I am nothing, but for the grace of God.