His Grace is Sufficient

2 Corinthians 12:9 | Ellen Randall Dunn “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9

In recent years, I have found myself in strange territory: I lived through a pandemic (weird), my kids graduated from college and have been leaving the nest, I entered my 60s (really weird), and as we all emerged from lockdown, for the first time in my life, I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do next. The good news has been that God has been with me, and the weirdness hasn’t seemed to faze Him.

In these last weeks of September 2024, I’m marking another strange, significant milestone: it is 40 years since my mother died of cancer at age 65. Not what she or my dad expected as they entered retirement. Not at all what I expected as a young college grad who had “launched” a few months before Mom’s diagnosis, and who was barely “clearing the trees” at 23 when she died. As you can imagine, her death left me floored by grief, shifted my world off its axis, and profoundly changed my life. Wounded, dazed, I wondered, “How is this possible?” and “Now what?”

God is merciful. Mom had ensured that I grew up in the church, and in high school, I encountered the living God who was interested in and relevant to my life. By the time Mom was diagnosed, I had decided that this “following Jesus” thing wasn’t just a passing phase. As young and clueless as I was, I was in. When Mom died, I leaned heavily on Jesus and His people, and both held me as I grieved and helped me stand and keep going.

God is merciful. At the right time, God revealed His grace – the “breadth and length and depth and height” of His love for me, love that I didn’t deserve and couldn’t earn. I now knew that God’s love and righteousness, His tender affection and almighty justice, were inseparable, and for me. Through Christ’s death and resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit, I could live the Christian life without fear of God getting fed up with me and walking away.

And yet. I didn’t realize it, but while I knew God was good and walked with me through both good and bad, I braced myself against the bad. Years went by. Decades. Mom wasn’t here when I earned my master’s degree, married, had two sons, nor when I laid my dad to rest after his 17 years of widowhood. I became unsurprised when bad things happened. When people did terrible things, when sickness, strife, even disaster struck. “We live in a fallen world,” I reasoned. “Weird stuff happens.” (That’s the clean version.) I didn’t blame God, but I didn’t expect much.

This became a problem. I trusted God, but only to a point. As my husband and I raised our boys, I found it difficult to fully trust God for their well-being. “God loves them better than I do,” I told myself, but I was still afraid. “Okay, God, I know you’re still in charge,” I’d pray, “but you gave us free will, and some people do tell you, ‘No.’ What about that?” I knew that trusting God doesn’t guarantee that He’ll make everything turn out the way I want it to. But then, what am I trusting Him for?

“Weird stuff happens,” I used to tell myself with grim resolution. But bracing myself against the “weird stuff” hadn’t helped me avoid, minimize, or explain pain. Worse, I had allowed it to limit my faith and trust in the God that I love. I didn’t want this. The older I get, the more I want to trust Him. After nearly 40 years, “Weird stuff happens” wasn’t working anymore. Then, another thought came to me – “but it’s not the only thing that happens” – and I felt a door open in my mind and spirit.

When Mom was the age I am now, she was living with cancer, knowing she would lose the battle. Knowing she would miss out on most of her daughter’s life. A little more than a year from now, I will have lived longer than my mother did. To be honest, the remaining years – whether I get one, ten, or thirty – feel like bonus time. Gravy. I want to live them well, trusting God for every aspect of my life. Serving Him and His purposes for me. What else is there, really?

His grace is sufficient for me. Weird stuff happens, but it’s not the only thing that happens.