grace & small revelations

Today was what I would usually understatedly call “not the best day ever”.

I had nightmares last night (which is an extremely rare occurrence in my life) and woke up feeling really gross.  I was tired all day.  We had an activation in the morning session where we had to tell people why we loved them, but I wasn’t able to find most of the people I wanted to talk to.  When we did treasure hunting in the afternoon, nobody wanted to talk to us and we couldn’t match any of our words of knowledge.  We had chicken for dinner.  I napped by mistake and missed a meeting of my outreach team.  We went to House of Prayer (two hours of intercessory worship) in the evening, and I was feeling really sick, with no recourse.  Then, just as I was ready to go home and crash, one of my outreach team leaders came up to me and filled me in on what I missed at the meeting…

…we’re sharing testimonies tomorrow night.  Not in the school—in front of the church.  Having had no prior practice.  And because most of our team is leaving for the holiday weekend (Thanksgiving in Canada is inexplicably in mid-October), it’s only going to be me and two other people.  There was also somebody that I was feeling a little bit judged by in the evening, which is not something you encounter a lot of here, so even a little bit of condemnation (real or perceived) feels like a ton of bricks.

I was literally on the verge of bursting into tears.  The whole way back to the dorms, I was just like I can’t do this.  There’s no way.  I don’t want to do any of this. 

In lieu of having any comfort food (I haven’t been able to buy chocolate because I’m poor), I took a hot shower and God and I had some space to talk.  I poured out what i was feeling, and ended it with “…it just has not been a good day.”  and suddenly, I was reminded of a quote I heard a couple of weeks ago from a guy called Graham Cooke:

“[God] is faithful.  From this day on, for you there is no such thing as a good day or bad day.  There is only a day of grace.  And some days the grace of God allows you to enjoy what is happening.  And some days the grace of God allows you to endure what is happening.  But don’t think about good and bad anymore – just enjoy the grace that is present.”

So I started thinking about what grace showed up in my life.  obviously I endured, or I would be dead right now.  So how was God showing up in my “bad day”?

Although I was really tired this morning, I was still able to immerse in the storytelling glory of the marvelous Chris DuPre (our speaker for the week; more on that in another post).  Even though I hated the chicken at dinner, the sweet potato fries we also had were fantastically good.  I was able to reach out to people this morning that I might not normally talk to a lot.  Even if it felt like our treasure hunt was a failure, we still stepped out despite feeling incredibly awkward, and that’s a stinking big deal.  We finally got our shower head replaced this week, so I actually had water pressure for a decent shower (glory, glory hallelujah!).  Emily lent me use of her hot chocolate mix.  I was able to participate in the rapid-fire prayer at the House of Prayer and actually feel like I was connecting with God even though I felt sick.  Somebody randomly turned out to have a book I’ve been wanting to read and offered to lend it to me.  One of my roommates gauged that I was in a weird mood (she became alarmed because I wasn’t talking to myself) and asked if I was okay, which meant a lot to me.

I still am feeling really not-okay with testimony-sharing tomorrow, but there will be grace. There has been grace for every time I’ve had to get up and babble in front of people before.  I actually have a testimony to share, and I have a friend or two that will let me practice on them in the hallway tomorrow.  So that’s a good start.

There’s always grace.  Ask for it, and you’ll find it.