Walking With Grace

Good morning Blogging Family! You’ve probably inferred that I’m going to tell you that my book is now 40% off. That it would make the perfect gift for old friends or a new coworker who’s going through X, or that incorrigible relative who refuses any and all olive branches, so what have you got to lose, really?

There. I’ve just said all the stuff you thought I was going to say. Now we can get off to the real start! You see, this post isn’t meant to be one more advertisement promising the key to previously unattainable happiness is just waiting to be unwrapped under the Christmas tree.

Rather, I want to talk about how we give to and receive gifts from each other, human to human, and how our natural and learned behaviors played into the drama of Jesus’ life on earth.

Starting in the present, I am a terrible gift-giver. It’s not that my heart is in the wrong place. I love seeing people happy, and am frequently overcome by the suspense before they open their package and (hopefully) smile. Very few people share their secrets with me when Christmas is in the air.

Yes, I love giving presents. But I’m never sure what to give other people. I know what I like, and I try to imagine what the other person might like, but that’s typically where I go off the rails. Example: Did you know there are shampoo brushes on Amazon?? So far Ivan has caught me and set matters straight before I do any real damage…so far.

We’ve all experienced the embarrassment of getting something we don’t want. The pain of the forced smile, the mental anguish of “How many times do I have to wear this before I get rid of it?” or “Now I’ve got to remember to put out this vase every time she comes over.” And these are the redeemable situations.

True heartbreak (I believe) hits children the hardest. There’s the injury of not getting something you wanted, often accompanied by the insult of seeing it given to someone else. One year when my sister and I were in elementary school, I noticed a beautiful model horse in a store and pointed it out to my mom and sister. Every time we went to that store, I asked permission to leave the shopping cart and visit what I quickly termed “my horse.” I barely noticed that Anna was tagging along.

Until Christmas morning, when she discovered “my horse” under sheets of red-and-green wrapping paper. I couldn’t believe it. Could I have been any more obvious about what I wanted for Christmas? Everything moved in slow motion as I unwrapped my own present. I don’t remember what it was, although I’m sure my parents would have chosen something well-made, practical, and probably even attractive like new clothes or shoes. According to me that Christmas morning, I’d just been big-sistered out of my dream gift.

So how do these contemporary examples mirror how people in biblical times received Jesus that very first Christmas?

First, God’s long-awaited, greatly-anticipated Savior of the world was not a gift on Israel’s wavelength. No one, not even her fiancé Joseph, believed Mary’s story about the angel Gabriel – even though Scripture suggests she had a sterling reputation until that point. None of the gospels record the townspeople of Bethlehem stampeding Joseph and Mary’s stall to see their Savior after they heard the shepherds’ good news. The Messiah was supposed to be a powerful king who would set them free from captivity – currently Rome. A little baby was good for nothing. Shampoo brush, anyone?

Second, the Jews just plain did not want grown-up Jesus. He hadn’t transformed into that mighty king they’d been expecting for thousands of years. Jesus was just a carpenter, carrying on the family trade. His miracles piqued their interest, to be sure, but could anyone this average really be Messiah material? Stop the jaw-dropping miracles and sizzling religious debates, and most of the thrill-seekers following Jesus would vanish overnight. The prophet Isaiah says it well (53:1-2):

Who has believed our message
    and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
    and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

The third example is actually taken from God’s perspective. We know that God created the world and everything in it to reflect his perfect holiness and creativity. When our always-present, all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, all-wise, and unfathomably holy God pronounces something “good” – the human word “good” becomes an understatement. I like the way the Westminster Shorter Catechism explains our purpose on this planet: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever” (Q&A #1).

God gave us perfection: a perfect relationship with him, the first and perfect marriage, a paradisiacal garden to tend at the heart of a breathtaking planet. And we didn’t want it. Starting with Adam and Eve’s original sin in the Garden of Eden, and continuing through each individual’s sin up to the present moment, we tell God his perfect present to us isn’t perfect enough. We’d rather have fame, or pleasure, or worldly relationships, or revenge, or wealth, or…anything but a right relationship with our Creator.

Adding insult to God’s injury, we deny the thanksgiving and adoration due our Creator and Messiah, only to throw them away mindlessly to gods who cannot satisfy or be satisfied. There will always be more weight to lose, another gym to join. Can you really afford the low mpg on that new collectible car? What about your profile on the latest dating app? Would your church friends recognize you? Not all of these are specifically Christmas gifts, per se, but they’re all purportedly “harmless” things that can hijack our hearts and replace God. We placate our consciences by tossing God our leftovers: church, the occasional bible study, maybe even coffee with a mentor.

My point in comparing human gift-giving with biblical Messiah-receiving is not to preach gloom and doom. My point is that we humans have similar tendencies no matter which century we live in. Sometimes, beginning with the familiar helps us identify with the unfamiliar. People in Bible times reacted to Jesus’ miraculous birth much like we might react to an unwanted gift today. Both they and we prefer investing our time, interests, and efforts where the crowd is. What a happy coincidence when Jesus is in the crowd, too!

As we look forward to celebrating the coming of our Savior in a few more days, I’m challenging myself as well as you: Where do things stand between you, God, and your Christmas present? Have you accepted the Messiah as your personal Lord and Savior? If not, send me a message! If you have, where are you investing your time and energy this Christmas? Where would others say your priorities are? Do you live like you’ve accepted God’s offer of redemption?

May the Lord bless us and guide us as we seek to follow him this Christmas season.

Seven years ago today, I no-showed to my own Christmas concert. Little did we know my and Ivan’s lives had changed forever.

Many of you already know the basics of my accident story if you’ve been following us through the blog, social media, or my new book, Walking with Grace: Embracing God’s Goodness in Trauma. If you’re new to us or would like a refresher, feel free to check out the blog’s intro here or consider purchasing Walking with Grace here or on Amazon.

However you know us, you’ve probably read about God sustaining us through long seasons of turmoil, uncertainty, potential despair. When one wave of health and relational issues neared resolution, it seemed there was always another wave riding its wake, eager to break over our heads and pull us to the bottom with its un-human power.

But God.

In the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church, he shares that God has given him a “thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.” Yikes. “Messenger from Satan” is tough stuff. On the other hand, Paul has been caught up to Heaven and received spiritually “classified” information. Does that mean he must be taken down a peg no matter how he responds?

Paul doesn’t claim innocence or protest the injustice of his “thorn.” His submission to God’s seemingly harsh judgment affirms God as sovereign King of the universe. But unlike when he was enslaved to sin, Paul enjoys a redeemed Father-son relationship with the Lord. God is still the Father, but Paul can now ask for mercy as one of his beloved children.

What about me? What did I do?

We were not able to identify a particularly severe sin or heart issue for which God could have been disciplining me when I was struck by a car that cloudy afternoon on December 3rd, 2016. At the same time, I am not perfect and cannot claim to know the crevasses and crannies of my own heart, which the Bible tells me is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).

I was unconscious and Ivan was in shock, but God’s people literally all over the world were lifting us up in prayer – so many sons and daughters begging our Father for mercy.

The Apostle Paul begs Father God to take away his messenger from Satan. But God sticks to his (metaphorical) guns. “Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said to me, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work within me.” ~ 2 Corinthians 12:8-9

Father God spared my life that night. I truly believe this was thanks to the countless prayers from his beloved sons and daughters that rose as pleasing incense to him that night. But I also didn’t yank out all my wires and walk out of my ICU room the next morning. I wonder if God let my healing play out a more painful, circuitous route to maximize the amount of people with whom we’ve shared our faith in therapy, doctors’ offices, and hospital stays. Our rollercoaster ride of ailments requiring urgent care/ER trips has also glorified his powerful ability to keep me and my immediate family safe beyond reasonable explanation. Most importantly, in the past couple of years he’s broken my obsessive reliance on specialty care and is helping me fix my eyes on him, the One True Healer and the Greatest Physician in the Universe.

It’s human nature to survey the past seven years of suffering and reflect on how we’ve “survived.” But like the Apostle Paul, I’d rather surrender them to Father God and call them Years of Power instead. Thankful for 2023 and hopeful for many more to come!

Hello, Blogging Family! It’s good to be back. 😊 Although I’ve written a light-hearted post, Ivan and I want to acknowledge the burdens many are carrying during this unprecedented season, whether from personal trials or world events.

~

Whether or not you’re American, or celebrate Thanksgiving this particular Thursday (sorry Canadians!), or eat turkey (apologies to the meat-averse and diverse), it is my joy and delight to wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Our culture often markets the day as a warm up for Black Friday – eat plenty of turkey so you’ll have energy to (literally) shop sun up to sun down! Officially we’re to devote ourselves to thanking God for all his blessings, but who isn’t prioritizing their “must-haves” and puzzling over the perfect itinerary at the same time? I stand guilty as charged.

This year I want to make a change by publicly thanking God (and you!) for some amazing blessings we’ve received over the past year. I wish I could sit at each of your dinner tables and thank you personally, but this post will have to do. If you’ve been following us a while, I’ll probably bore you by repeating facts you already know, but bear with me for the sake of the holiday. 😊

I’ll start by praising God for everything he has allowed – for good or ill – in our lives this year. Highs included going to Europe with some of Ivan’s students, and watching God grow our new church, City Light Bible Church. Lows included me earning my first F on a school assignment (ever) and us finally catching Covid after avoiding it for the past 3 years. Only God knows whether or not any of these seemingly little things will impact ours or anyone else’s life in the future, but we trust that they fit into God’s meta-plan:

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.

    “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,

    so my ways are higher than your ways

    and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” ~ Isaiah 55:8-9

And now’s the part where I thank YOU, our faithful Blogging Family!Thank you for the unbelievable enthusiasm, support, and advertising you gave, embraced, and shared during every step of publishing Walking with Grace (WWG). When I started working with Shepherd Press last December, turning our vision into a physical book seemed like climbing Mount Everest. Thank you also for supporting my and Ivan’s blog for the past six (wow!) years. You bore with both of us as we learned how to write. Because of this blog, I wanted to learn to communicate better. The obvious next step was returning to school…

Summing up five VERY long years, I first added a BA in English to my BS in health science (1 year). Then God allowed me to get accepted to my top pick for grad school, and he paved my way financially. What an amazing God we serve!

Here is where I thank y’all again as well: The Master of Fine Art (MFA) in creative writing took me four years to complete (It’s considered a doctorate for writers). Over the past four years, y’all have waited graciously when I forgot to post, or posted a first draft, or didn’t check for typos (gasp). You didn’t lose interest and drift away, no matter how much I struggled to keep up with school and the blog simultaneously. THANK YOU!!! 

I was told that no serious readers would stick around if I was that erratic, but you did. And the fact that you hung in there through it all was one of my biggest selling points when I was “auditioning” the book for agents. To you, it was a simple click. To me, it was another chip in my favor as I hung in the balance. You never know what God might be doing while you blog surf!

I’d be extremely remiss without thanking the staff and volunteers at Hillside Church for hosting our live radio interview with Craig Roberts about WWG. We also really appreciate City Light Bible’s volunteers. Thanks to both churches for the space to do book signings!

~

Whether you walk with us through this blog, social media, our book, or real life, Ivan and I can’t express how grateful we are to be surrounded by such a God-glorifying cloud of believers. I truly believe we wouldn’t have made it anywhere close to where we are now without your faithful, expectant, tireless prayers. May God enable us to pray the same way for you!

“A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back

and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”

~ Ecclesiastes 4:12

Hello Blogging Family! My parents, Ivan, and I are SO grateful to the staff at Hillside Church and volunteers from Hillside and City Light Bible Church for the live radio event they helped produce last week.

Last Friday we appeared as guests on “Life!line with Craig Roberts.” The show ran 5-7pm live on KFAX-AM1100. Life!Line is Northern California’s longest-running Conservative & Christian talk show. 

The recording is split in half since it’s a two hour show…

…No judgment if you listen at 1.25 speed. (Or higher! =O )

Whether you attended the live show, the book signing, or are catching up online, Ivan and I are immensely thankful for every single one of you. My favorite part of last Friday was the book signing because it helped me start linking screen names with faces! 😀 Please keep us updated if you have an unsigned book or purchase a new one – we may schedule another book signing based on demand.

Neither I nor my coauthor (Ivan) has any shot at being the next Shakespeare. But we pray what God’s given us to write may encourage you and point you to the Great Physician, who alone gives perfect healing.

“Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.” 1 Corinthians 1:27

Join me, Ivan, and my parents (Keith and Teri Crosby) at Hillside Church TOMORROW, 10/6, for our live radio interview with Craig Roberts.

“Life!line with Craig Roberts” is Northern California’s longest-running Conservative & Christian talk show. Show runs 5-7pm PST on KFAX-AM1100.

Latecomers are welcome. Book signing to follow.

Audio stream from ANYWHERE at: https://kfax.com

Ivan and I are beyond blessed by the outpouring of messages, comments, likes, reposts, and tags you’ve showered on us over the birth week of Walking with Grace: Embracing God’s Goodness in Trauma. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, whatever you may find encouraging or challenging in our story is a direct result of how graciously God works through and in spite of human brokenness.

Thank you for rejoicing with us at the completion of a work that was first imagined almost seven years ago. ❤ We can’t wait to celebrate with you tomorrow in person, online, and over the airwaves! (KFAX-AM1100)

Happy Friday, Blogging Family! Can you believe it’s T-3 days until Walking with Grace: Embracing God’s Goodness in Trauma comes out this Monday?

Watch my unedited first look at the final copy and praise God with us for the work He has done!

Hello Blogging Family! We recently released a video to promote Walking with Grace on Facebook and Instagram so I thought I’d include it here as well.

Your love and support mean the world to us, whatever form that takes. I wish I could write a personal thank youth everyone who reads or shares our story, but I don’t get to see anything about sales. Still, I’ll happily give an enormous THANK YOU if you let me know virtually or in person. 🙂

In the big picture, we hope our story might glorify God by telling of his wondrous intervention and grace in our lives in the midst of suffering. God’s already given you an active roll in that drama and I’m sure will continue to do so. Thank you for how much you pray for us all these years later, and praise the Lord!

Will there be a yesterday? My sister and I are in our bedroom, mulling over the various worksheets covering our “children’s table,” when we hear the phone. But the phone never rings! Daddy is always in class or at one of his jobs, and Mom almost never talks on the phone. Who is it?

Mom leaves us to our assignments and answers in the hallway. She greets our grandmother, “Gi”, but calls my name a few seconds later. “Grace,” she orders. “Turn on the TV.” “Coming!” I holler, vigorously slapping all the limbs that have fallen asleep since I’ve been lying on them. I amble into the living room and turn on our TV, not expecting to see much. We don’t have cable and only pick up a local network or two with our wire set of “rabbit ears.”

What I see as the screen fades into focus on the screen strikes me like a cement battering ram. Planes flying into skyscrapers. Bodies and body parts falling through the air. Fires in the planes. Fires in the towers. And then the unimaginable. Is this some sort of movie? Who’s going to make it stop?

I freeze.

Anna wanders into the living room casually, carrying her worksheet and a few colored pencils.

“What’s that?” she asks. “A plane accident?”

No words.

I don’t remember when Mom hangs up the phone, or what she tells us the day of the attacks. I just remember crouching on our well-used Persian rug, glued to the TV, watching the planes destroy the towers and our people over and over again. It’s like a pernicious Infomercial with ratings that stay so high it never stops. I don’t know why Anna and I keep watching or why Mom keeps letting us. Maybe she’s hoping for more news updates. Maybe the news is indeed updating but my eight- year-old brain doesn’t follow.

Once Daddy gets home I start hearing new, unfriendly words like “terrorist,” “terror attack,” and “Al-Qaeda.” I have no idea what any of them mean. “Mom, what’s a terrorist?” I’ll ask the next day at lunch. She won’t answer.

My violin lesson and orchestra rehearsal are canceled the day of the attacks. As an eight-year-old, this seems perhaps the greatest tragedy of them all. My violin teacher and my orchestra friends are very real to me. I feel happy or sad with them because we share our stories together. These plane attacks are different. I know I should feel sorry for the falling bodies on our pixelated screen. If you asked me if I feel sorry for them, I’d give a resounding “Yes!” But I worry I’m lying. I don’t feel anything on the inside about all those people. Of course I wish they could come back to life and return to their families. But my life hasn’t changed. I’m sick of watching the news and I haven’t had a violin lesson in two whole weeks! Can’t we just pretend like all this never happened and go back to normal?

Our church holds a candlelight vigil the Friday after 9/11. Suddenly I’m holding a real candle in my real hand for another real person who is really dead. That’s about as real as my music lessons. As are the yellow ribbons tied proudly around many trees in our formerly less-than patriotic Van Nuys neighborhood. If those didn’t make 9/11 real to a little girl in the San Fernando Valley, our next flight to Savannah certainly did: Mom, worrying some or all of us will get foot warts as we remove our shoes and walk barefoot through the TSA scanner; me, getting frisked by big, scary officers even though I’m only nine years old; all of us, inconsolable upon learning there are no more in-flight meals.

Even at that young age, I could sense the world was changing and there would be no going back. For a couple of years, our country enjoyed a deeper sense of unity. In some states it even became cool to say pseudo-Christian phrases like “God Bless America.” Twenty years later, I also look at the little children in airports think how sad it must be that they’ll never see a loved one waiting for them right at the gate after they land. What must it be like to grow up always associating planes with impractical precautions, scary what-ifs, and potential death? How did “terrorist” become a vocabulary word elementary school kids acquire and use, just like “clown” or “chef”?

If I were remembering today without Christ, I would see it as a day of utter tragedy for our nation and for the innocent future generations of America. But because I know that God is as completely good as he is sovereign, I can still trust his plan for our country and its families:

²⁹ Then his disciples said…^” Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we believe that you came from God.”

³¹ Jesus asked, “Do you finally believe? …³³ I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” ~John 16:29-33

Happy September, Blogging Family! It’s crazy that Ivan‘s last post was six weeks ago. Hopefully we will clarify that shortly!

I could begin with a variety of jokes about hands, mine in particular, but I’d rather start by quoting the apostle James:

¹³ Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” ¹⁴ How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. ¹⁵ What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ Otherwise you are boasting about your own pretentious plans, and all such boasting is evil. ~ James 4:13-15

Basically, that’s why I haven’t written y’all earlier. And I’m still not writing. I’m dictating a note on my iPhone. Sadly, Microsoft Word no longer dictates if you are one of those dinosaurs who actually bought the software several years ago as I did. Little could I have known that now you only get the dictation feature if you to subscribe to Office 365. So here we are: Future you, reading. Current me, talking into my phone and sounding like a crazy person to the landscaper near our screen door, knowing that I will still have to email this to myself and correct a bunch of crazy words and punctuation. Alas forsooth.

Returning to our main topic (hands), along with James’s commentary. The aforementioned surgery did what it was supposed to: It released some tendons that had been pressed together in my right wrist. But I was not a good patient. I was supposed to completely rest my right hand for at least 2 to 4 weeks after the surgery. For me, that was impossible. After the two strokes during my initial accident, I never regained feeling in my left hand, which means I’m still overly reliant on my right hand. Take that hand away, and I’m pretty much done for.

Praise the Lord, that the surgery happened in the summer so Ivan was on break and able to help me as much as possible. He was amazingly kind about taking care of chores, cooking, and all the random things that you never think of doing until you can’t. Like using utensils, or lifting a coffee cup (still can’t!), or putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. On my end, I began pushing post-surgical precautions after a few days because I felt guilty sitting around aimlessly, watching my strong, godly husband work like a housewife. What’s more, I hated the idea of him continuing to help me with my responsibilities if I was not completely better before the school year started, (See my plan to go to “a certain town”?)

I was not completely better when he got back to work, and I insisted on resuming as much of my old routine as possible (do business and make a profit). Hence why I am writing to you today. To summarize complicated medicalese, the surgery site healed as planned, but I’ve overcompensated while it was recovering with other parts of my right hand so that these parts are even more painful than the original injury was. My right hand has built up so much scar tissue and inflammation that it’s simulating pretty noticeable arthritis. Since I haven’t had this problem before, they’re not treating it as real arthritis, and they’re hoping it will settle down with lots of therapy. Until then, I have a giant red X marked over handwriting, typing, and therefore most of my academic/creative life.

Giving both my hands to the Lord is terrifying. God chose not to restore my left hand when he was healing me from my original accident, which means I haven’t performed on the violin since 2016. That loss is something I still grieve deeply. As I continue on this hand journey, I hear a voice of fear whispering, “What if you lose the right hand too? That was your second chance at creativity, at having a meaningful purpose in life.” But this is where I run to God.The voice in my head is lying. Living as God’s redeemed child is my purpose in life. And he helped me survive an extreme accident, which drives home just how much he wants me here on earth. I’m in his hands even if I don’t know the plan yet. Those fears trying to deceive me are not the guaranteed outcome of this trial with my right hand – they’re just worst-case scenario thinking. My therapist, on the other hand, is so confident he can “fix” me that he put a number on it : 12 sessions.

But even if God wills differently than the therapist, or I “find more “emergencies” to use my right hand; even if the scar tissue doesn’t break down, or the inflammation stays and it does become arthritis, I’m not losing my right hand. I’m sure we’ll find a good dictation set up. I might not be as creative as I’d hoped since I prefer working with pen and paper, but I’ll know that I’m working the way God wants me to work. And I know when I’m doing that, as the line goes in Chariots of Fire, “I feel His pleasure.”

I can’t see what the next four months hold. Perhaps not much writing (unless I can bribe Ivan!). But I know God’s sovereign plan is best for me, and for you, and for all of us who are waving our arms (and hands) wildly, trying to regain our footing after getting our breath knocked out of us by disappointment ninjas. Fall into God’s arms with me. He won’t ever let us go. 

Friendly Reminder: Walking with Grace: Embracing God‘s Goodness in Trauma comes out October 2!! You can pre-order now through Amazon or Shepherd Press.

<3<3Thanks for your prayers and support through all the years! <3<3

Ivan: Hello Blogging Family, it’s been a while since my last post! I’m here to let you all know that Grace has, once again, had surgery. This procedure was to address a tendon injury in her right wrist. The injury has its roots back in December 2016, at the time of the original accident. When the car ran the red light and hit Grace as she was walking in a crosswalk, Grace was holding her violin case in her right hand. Despite the impact of the crash, Grace did not let go of her violin case but hung on to it; her muscles tightened around the handle of the case. We suspect this is what initially damaged the tendons around her right wrist.

It’s been seven and a half years since then, and Grace has had intermittent pain and weakness in her right hand. This is especially problematic since Grace’s left hand is compromised due to her strokes. Depending on how long you’ve been following this blog, you may remember that Grace has no sensation in her left hand, which is why she can’t play violin anymore. She can move her left hand, but has limited fine motor skills. So she really relies on her right hand as her “only hand.”

Furthermore, as a writer Grace prefers to work by hand rather than typing, although there is no escaping computers and phones these days. Handwriting is especially taxing on her damaged tendon. Household chores and other daily activities are also hindered.

So after various rounds of therapy and injections over the years, it was time to choose the surgical route. Praise God, Grace’s surgery went well! There were some concerns about undergoing general anesthesia, given Grace’s neurological history; but that aspect of the procedure also went smoothly. Now we are in the recovery stage, during which Grace will gradually test out her “new and improved” right hand’s strength and capabilities.

God is good. He has sustained Grace through so many medical hurdles before, and He will continue to strengthen her for the work He has for her. Thank you all for your continued prayers and support, including for all the kind messages we’ve received about Grace’s upcoming book release!

To conclude, let’s be encouraged by Paul’s reminder to the Christians at Philippi:

“But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.” (Philippians 3:20-21)