Mountains of Grace
A couple of years after my first marriage, we were blessed with a son we named Colin. Like any mom, I loved him with every fiber of my being. However, I had always wanted a baby girl.
When I was a little kid, with two ornery brothers, I often asked my parents for a baby sister. Finally, my mom told me if I wanted a baby girl, I would just have to have one of my own. So that goal became my long-term plan “B”.
Then, when Colin was almost two years old, I gave birth to Kristen, a beautiful little baby girl. She was definitely “little,” weighing in at barely five pounds. Toddler Colin called her “Tiny”, and it was the perfect nickname for her.
My life would now be perfect, I thought! However, perfection quickly gave way to harsh reality. Kristen was born with rare and complicated heart defects, and we lost her by the time she was three months old. I was beyond devastated!
I thought I was losing my mind from my very deep and unrelenting grief. Her death was then followed by two miscarriages producing even more grief. In retrospect, I know that I needed some mental health intervention, but sadly, back then, such things were looked down upon, especially for Christians.
I felt like I had been betrayed by God. It was like I had run headlong into a huge black mountain on the pathway of my life. I couldn’t get around it, and I didn’t have the strength to climb it.
However, God’s grace was sufficient, and finally, two years later, Darcy was born, bright-eyed and beautiful. Life was good except for the deep lingering grief over Kristen. Although it never went away, I eventually learned to live with it.
For twenty-two years I had what I felt was as close to a perfect marriage as anyone can get. Then suddenly and unexpectedly ‘Betrayal’ in all its ugly cruelty struck. I discovered my husband was involved in an affair.
Another mountain was now positioned directly on the pathway of my life. This one was especially cold and threatening and unbelievably high. I was in total panic! I couldn’t get around it, and I didn’t have the strength to climb it.
I did everything I could to save my marriage. I did everything right and everything wrong, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. In fact, in my desperation, I went a little overboard. No, actually, I went a LOT overboard.
At one point, I took a .357 magnum handgun out to shoot the chimney off the other woman’s house. I actually thought that when her husband came home and said, “Honey, where’s the chimney?” it would get her attention and I would get my husband back. (Yes, I definitely went overboard!)
But God’s grace was sufficient for me even when I didn’t know I needed it. He saved me from my own insanity…and he even saved her chimney. (That little detail I didn’t think was really necessary for Him to do…)
The infidelity continued for the remaining two years of our marriage until we divorced. I was then devoured by extreme loneliness. This loneliness and pain were another mountain that was blocking the pathway of my life. This one felt so very cold and bleak. There was no way around it, and I was too weak to climb it, but God’s grace was sufficient.
By this time, Colin was out on his own, so Darcy, who was then 16, moved with me from Kansas to San Diego, California. God eventually brought Don and his two kids, Steve, who was 8, and Shannon, 12, into my life. Don and I dated and fell in love, and we decided to marry and form one of those “Blended Families” that we had heard so much about.
Then we discovered that the term, “Blended Family” was simply a euphemism for “Life in the Blender,” as we all struggled to adjust. However, I found God’s grace was sufficient even when the blender seemed to be set on ‘high.’
The bottom line was, that no matter how tough things got, amazingly, the four kids really did love each other. Also, each one in their own time came to love a new parent that they had not asked for, wanted, or ever in their wildest dreams thought would be part of their life.
Don and I had been married for a couple of years when another major event entered our lives. Darcy, then 19, had a seizure.
I took her to the hospital where her room immediately swarmed with doctors and nurses. There was a bevy of tests and scans. The doctors said things like, “She has a mass on her brain but it’s too big to be a tumor, maybe it’s a brain infection.” I was lost in a fog of shock.
It was at this point when I couldn’t speak or think, that I heard the voice of God in my head. He had the volume turned up LOUD to get through the fog in my brain. “MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU!! MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU!!” It continued on and on.
Nurses came in and hugged me, and then THEY started crying! I knew this meant we were in deep trouble, but I was numb and couldn’t fully process what was happening.
Don was beside me when we finally heard the message. “No, it isn’t an infection, it’s a terminal brain tumor.”
Why was God making me give up another one of my children?? Wasn’t one enough?? The ugly mountain that had periodically blocked the pathway of my life had now become a whole RANGE of ugly mountains that left me feeling numb and confused. I couldn’t get around them, and I was too weak to climb them.
Darcy’s original cancer diagnosis, which had given her less than six months to live, stretched into two and a half years. We lived daily with the joy of having her another day and the knowledge that not many days were left for her as we watched her pain and deterioration increase.
The mountains I now faced were many and they were very, very high. I couldn’t get around those mountains, and I didn’t have the strength to climb them. But from the first day of her diagnosis, I kept hearing God’s voice in my head, like a broken record with the volume stuck on high, saying to me over and over, “MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU!! MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU!!
We stood by in awe as we watched Darcy share with others that she knew she would be healed but that it would be in Heaven, not here on Earth.
She was 22 years old and had spent the last two months in a Hospice facility, when one morning God called her home for her own personal healing celebration.
This mountain was so VERY big, and the pain was so VERY great. I couldn’t get around it, and I didn’t have the strength to climb it alone. But God’s grace was sufficient. He wrapped his arms tightly around me and held onto my hand as He climbed that mountain with me!
But God wasn’t finished with me yet, and I was tested on what I had learned so far. Fifteen months later another enormous mountain suddenly erupted on my pathway.
It felt like there was a huge storm on that mountain and with no warning whatsoever, a bolt of lightning struck out at Don and me and into our already broken hearts.
Don’s 19-year-old daughter, Shannon, had taken her own life.
As we reeled in shock, we were catapulted into a deeper level of grief than we thought possible. But God was still saying to me, “MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU!”
We returned to the cemetery, the mortuary, the florist, and the church. We gave our order, “Just do the same thing for Shannon as you did for Darcy 15 months ago.” It seemed that we had become experienced buyers in a market we wanted no part of.
We felt like we were lost in a sea of black mountains. We couldn’t get around them, and we were too weak to climb them alone. But even then, I could not get away from the voice of God in my head saying, “MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU! MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR YOU!” And He held our hands, and He led us through those mountains.
Three months later, Steve, at 15, having lost both of his sisters, had chosen drugs to help deal with his pain. We had to send him away for an extended period to a place where he could get the needed help.
The following week, Geneva, Don’s mother, whom I loved like my own mom, was in the hospital. I was driving home from a business trip, planning to stop and visit her when Don called me on my phone. “Mom just passed away,” he said.
I pulled my car over to the side of the freeway and sobbed uncontrollably for 20 minutes while Don just helplessly listened on the other end of the phone.
Geneva had died primarily of a broken heart over the death of Shannon who had been her only granddaughter.
It felt like another mountain had just fallen on me. Again, with God’s grace, He wrapped his arms around me and held me close as I cried and cried. As hot tears rolled down my cheeks, I became aware it was not just my tears but now HIS tears as well were also on my cheek. Because of his deep love for me, my pain was also His pain.
Then began the long, long journey of Him leading us both out from under that mountain.
Many of our friends stopped coming around because they didn’t know what to say, and they couldn’t handle the seemingly endless list of losses that we had. We understood that, but it meant even more loss.
As I am now getting older, I would like to think that all those big black mountains are behind me. However, that’s just not the way life works.
This, I do know, that as more mountains may confront me, I won’t be able to get around them and I won’t have the strength to climb them, but God will provide the Grace and it WILL be sufficient for me!
Many times, people have asked how we got through all of this. The answer is simple. We have put our trust in a God who always walks with us through the highest, darkest mountains, a God whose grace is ALWAYS sufficient for us.