Grace These Days.

What grace looks like these days is women in sweatpants, women running late, women with unmade beds.  What grace looks like these days is women canceling for a party, women late to pray, women who don't work out.  What grace looks like these days is women grabbing to-go dinner, women having husbands iron, women who let weeds grow.

Grace in these days looks different.  Grace in these days is these women.

I came back from my honeymoon and knew I would tackle this issue, and know I will forever, but still need and covet the way that grace looks in these days.

I want to be the perfect wife.  I want perfectly laundered clothes, flowers that blossom full each season, meals from scratch each night at the table.  I want lipstick that seals and stays, coffee that is consistent each day, and little "love yous" posted everywhere.

I want Etsy, Real Simple, and Giada De Laurentiis to stare in awe of me.

And I want it all with a calm, confident, and "fresh beach day" look on my face and curls that bounce along with my pleasant lipsticked smile.

Here is where and why, God has intercepted and given me little glimpses into grace these days.

His grace to my perfectified idol, is his people.  His women.  Who laugh when they haven't made the bed, who miss meetings because they have missed their morning coffee, who show up to events with sweatpants.  And yet are the most godly women I know.  And they care for their home and their families with deep love and commitment.

His grace is his words through my Mother-in-Love, retold over me four times in the last week: that being a wife is being.  That it's the smile in the "welcome home", the calm love evening night, the sleepy kiss in the morning good-bye.  Its Bekah's words about rest and doing one single thing each day, and being the well to come home to.  Its the WLT ladies and their laughter and words that remind me that "godly" doesn't mean my painted perception.

Grace these days is women.  Women who love well, who love whole, who let grace be the guide and love the statute.  Grace these days is their story, God's story, given to me through them, so I can learn, and teach, and accept it myself: Grace.