Grace

I picked up a new book at the library recently, not sure what I'd think of it, and found I really enjoyed it.
It's called "Finding Grace, a Memoir" by Donna VanLiere.
She was molested before she started Kindergarten and never told anyone until she married. She couldn't understand why God didn't protect her and felt shame over it. The story is of her discovery of God's grace through her life and realizing that we can't earn and don't deserve His grace, it's a free gift from Him.

Some things I found thought provoking or encouraging were:

"God sometimes does His work with gentle drizzle, not storms." Spoken by John Newton in the film Amazing Grace.

God was busy carving out and arranging things in my life but I was too frustrated to detect any of His work. pg. 69

I was exhausted from roaming the desert ... and each day I opened the Bible with a heated attitude that said, "Show me something." pg. 91
A quote on the same page from Charles Dickens said, "Nothing is discovered without God's intention and assistance."

On page 92 she realizes that she was looking for the "Cliff Notes" version of Faith and that just won't work. She talked about Jacob's wrestling match and gives a very descriptive image of what it must have been like. I'd never visualized it quite so realistically before.

The emptiness says: Come to me. I'll never betray you. I know you by name. I know the plans I have for you. I ignored that restlessness, and unconvinced that God really did have a purpose for me, I continued to drive my own plan. After all, isn't that easier and more manageable than discerning the mystery of the soul? pg. 115

At some point we throw up our hands but then what? It seems that we either continue to fight and wrestle, or we relinquish the plan as we've always known it in order to discover the Creator's dream for our life. When we admit our helplessness in driving our own dream and acknowledge God's divine power and goodness, we open the door to grace. pg. 120

"The great act of faith is when man decides that he is not God." Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

In the disappointment and frustration of infertility I was beginning to comprehend a God that shattered my childish perceptions. pg. 135

...I wonder why we deny ourselves the grace of God? For the first time in years I began to doubt my thirty-plus years of self-made reasoning. pg. 142