enough

"i do not understand the mystery of grace- only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us" anne lamott~ traveling mercies

i was thinking of an email i received a few years ago from my sister.  i dont really know why i was thinking about it.  maybe my mind went there because it was her birthday.  i do not remember the email in its entirety.  just one reference.  to grace.  grace and its sufficiency.  grace is talked about often, so why did this email settle in my mind?  you see my sister has had some major healthy problems.  over the last ten years she has been in and out of the hospital every 6 months or so fighting a pain that continued to be unidentified and incurable to many, many doctors.  with any illness of great length, your mind and emotions experience just as much, if not more, pain as the body.  i spent most of this time completely and utterly confused.  confused at God.  confused at doctors.  confused at my sister.  confused at God.  drivingto the hospital one day in college when lindsay had to spend some times there after another attack, i remember crying out to God for answers.  an explanation of why my sister, who i love and believe God loves, had to experience such pain and for so long.  and more than an explanation, i wanted it to stop.  how could a God of love and care of gentleness and compassion, grace and mercy, allow her to time and time again sit in that damn hospital and have doctors continue to fail to bring about any real change?  i was not the one on the bed, but i was furious.  i was sad.  i was hurt.  and i was confused.  as we all do, i try to make a deal with God... as if there was something the Creator of the universe wanted in exchange for healing.  i had faith that God really did have the measures to make it go away.  my family and lindsay's friends cried out for help, for an answer and it just seemed like we were getting now response. a few weeks after she went home from the hospital, lindsay sent out an email to some people catching them up on her latest episode.  she is a brilliant writer and i'm sure the email was full of capturing thoughts, but one stuck out.  His grace is sufficient for me.  "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9).  these words sprang of the page and pierced me in the heart.  how could this woman, my sister, who lived in either pain or the fear of pain arising, claim that God's grace was enough for her.  in the midst of a dismal picture of a life ahead that looked full of pain, she looked at the God who created her and loves her and said you are suffice.  the grace you have given me through Your Son on the cross, it is enough.  whether my insides are healed.  whether i will ever have children... Your grace is enough.  and i began to believe that His grace is enough for me.  i still doubt that and too often live my life trying to fill it with pride, success, money, and security, but remember that God loves me and He tells me His grace is enough.  He told me a couple of years ago in an email from a girl who had every right in the world to cuss God and tell him to take is sufficient grace straight to hell.  but in the midst of pain and suffering, she told me that His grace is enough.