Drinker of coffee, lover of words, seeker of grace.
If there’s one thing you should know about me up front, it’s that I’m a clumsy pursuer of grace. I try with all my might to earn it, sweat for it, deserve it, until finally I collapse on the ground, exhausted, and tell God it’s too hard; I can’t do it. He gives me that kind but knowing smile of his, as if to say, “Of course you can’t. That’s why it’s grace.”
My life has been indelibly marked by so much grace—both the forever kind and the more common graces of the here-and-now. This blog is one of the ways I remind myself of the grace that is all around me, if only I will open my eyes to see it.
I believe that one of life’s special graces is words in all forms, whether they’re exchanged with a friend over a cup of coffee, handwritten in an old-fashioned letter, neatly confined to the boxes of a crossword puzzle, or printed on the pages of a book. I discovered the magical worlds of Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls as a girl, and I’ve been smitten ever since. Somehow I managed to snag a job as a book editor, where I actually get paid to read and rearrange words all day.
But perhaps the most tangible way I’ve experienced grace in my life has been through the relationships God uses to shape me and grow me and hem me in. I was born into a loud, tight-knit family that loved me imperfectly but extravagantly, and over the years they have become not only my family but also my friends.
I spent my twenties and early thirties watching my friends dive into serious relationships, get engaged, get married, and start having babies, and I wondered if God had forgotten about me somewhere along the way when he was passing out the marriage-and-family-package blessings. After a series of eight flopped blind dates over the course of a decade, someone suggested yet another setup. I resisted at first, only agreeing on the condition that it would be my “last blind date ever.” It was. Daniel was entirely worth the wait.