grace good-byes and gratefulness

I'm sitting in my practice room by myself for the last time. The white walls are begging me to stay and I could turn the air conditioning on but something feels right about the stuffiness and the warmth. I have dreamt of this moment with the utmost of pleasure. Dear Lord, would the time ever come when I would be done with my musical obligations and be free? I could not even imagine.

There are literally fireworks going off outside.

And yet I'm here, and my emotions are rather blank. 

Sure, they came out and made a scene after my recital when all those late nights of tears and stress came to a head as the audience clapped for me and I realized it was all over.

But graduation and now: my last night at Grace, last shower in those nauseating bathrooms, last time playing this beautiful piano, there isn't much that I'm feeling. I'm ready. I've lived four years with this day in sight and I'm ready for it.

I'll move home tomorrow and my love will move here for the summer and life will move on. Life, with its surprises and twists and disappointments. It will move on. It will continue to be confusing, my plans will continue to be thwarted, and He will always prove He has something better. And maybe I'm not scared or sad or sentimental because of that constant that I have.

After I danced over to the library and slammed my last final on the desk as Lance spun me around, I glided home and did the only thing I could bring myself to do: walk through the sunshine. And so I walked and walked. In flip flops this time. I let the wind make my hair greasy in the best way. And I tried to muster up some emotion. Something. I'm done with school, for goodness' sake. I was a complete emotional mess last year and He has healed me! The man of my dreams will live in the same town as me so so soon! So much for which to be thankful! So much excitement.

And still nothing.

I kicked off my flip flops and let the mud seep between my toes, and it was the mud that reminded me of His grace. Messy, imposing, oozing. Like the wind that whipped around me and the blossom petals that danced to the ground. His grace is everywhere. It cascades down on us like the clothes above us in the closet when we lock ourselves in to cry, or the hum of my car as I screamed in pain and confusion while driving down Dodge. His grace hides us, it cheers us on like the grass that waves at us as we walk by. The song of His grace is always playing; sometimes with confusing dissonances and strange harmonies and deceptive cadences, sometimes so softly we cannot hear it. But it always plays, always oozes between our toes and envelops us like the wind. Whether we are walking through sunshine or crawling through the hailstorm, His grace is present. Feeling it doesn't matter; it is as constant as the air around me that most of the time my skin doesn't sense. 

When we look for Him in the late nights of practice rooms and swear we cannot find Him, we come to find later that we missed Him in some way. His grace was there, in the hum of the air conditioner, in the prayers my loved ones offered for me. 

You see, friends, His grace is so near all the time, no wonder we cannot feel it at times, as a fish cannot feel its liquid environment. We are immersed, drenched, cascaded daily in His grace and we hardly realize it. 

I literally just realized the corny connection so I'm going to make it:

I'm leaving Grace. I will hand in my keys and I will no longer study and study or practice and practice. New tests will come. Life tests. 

But grace will never leave me. His mercies have washed over me daily in the past four years, despite my sin, my discontentment, my pity parties, my selfishness, my rudeness, my pride; through broken hearts and belly laughs and tears of joy and screams of pain it still drenches me. We are all soaking.

And so, no matter where you are friends, no matter how much you can feel of Him, please believe me when I say that you will look back and see the immensity of His grace through it all. It is there. It is dense all around you. 

Thank Him for His grace. Live in it. Accept it. Drown in it. Bask in it. Walk through His blossoms and tiptoe through His fields and fields of sweet, unending, powerful, amazing, lifting grace.

I am thankful for these four years drenched in grace.

And I am humbled that it will follow me into the depths, up to the mountains, and straight into His presence.

Thank You Jesus, for Grace.