When we pay attention to God’s stories of grace in our lives, we begin to see what Flannery O’Connor calls the “imperceptible intrusions of grace.”  In recognizing God’s grace worked out in our lives, we live and love freely as God created and redeemed us to do.  I hope you enjoy one of my favorite “intrusion of grace” stories.

“Mom, please don’t cry!”  My thirteen-year-old daughter begged me to lift my head and   look at her.  I had collapsed over the steering wheel when I saw the blue lights of the second trooper in a matter of three weeks, realizing that despite my earnest efforts to watch my speed, I had again failed.  I was furious with myself, even though I knew that I had no malicious intent – I had driven over 3000 miles in the previous two months, carting kids around the Southeast to various camps and volleyball tournaments.  My chief method of coping with the draining and dreary hours on the road was to listen to sermons or lectures and sometimes as I did so I simply forgot to pay attention to how fast I was going.  But I knew it was no excuse and I dreaded the thought of telling my husband, even though I knew he would be understanding and forgiving.  So as the trooper sat in his car scrawling out an illegible ticket, I laid my head on the steering wheel and sobbed.

Then I heard Mary Elizabeth through my fury and self-pity and exhaustion, “Mom, I know – let’s pray!”  And since I certainly didn’t start praying, she did.  She asked God to be with me and to help me know it was just a mistake and to help me remember what a great trip we had had.  Somewhere in her prayer, I heard the voice of Jesus, whispering, “Come out and join the party.”  The officer offered me the ticket like a bill from the local diner and said cheerfully, “Have a blessed day, Ma’am!”  I resisted the urge to tell him exactly what would bless my day and maneuvered the car back onto the highway to drive the last 60 miles of the thousand mile round trip I had done in the last 24 hours.

Mary Elizabeth, tender nurturer that she is, persisted in her goal of cheering me up with more camp stories.  That morning she had been talking with a friend whose grandfather had died before camp.  M.E. noticed her friend was sad and asked her what was bothering her, and the friend told her going home made her remember how much she missed her grandfather.  Mary Elizabeth reported the consoling words she spoke to her friend, “That’s the way it is with losing someone to death, you are sad, then you forget for a while, then you may be sad again, and that’s okay.”

As she told me this story, she seemed to experience a sudden revelation and chirpily added, “But getting a speeding ticket isn’t the same as your grandfather dying!”  I couldn’t help but laugh, and I remembered the words I have spoken numerous times and heard repeated back to me, “This will make a really good story one day!”  Indeed, God was redeeming this story already, bringing beauty out of ugliness.  I would never choose the humiliation of being stopped by state troopers twice in one month, but I also wouldn’t trade the beauty of my thirteen-year-old daughter ministering to my heart.

Because I am attuned to God’s story of grace playing through all of my stories, I can hear the melody of redemption in this particular story.  Though it highlights my humiliation, I remember and tell this story, because it reveals God’s redemption.  I was committed to a story I had written, one in which I played the righteous hero, the supermom driving my children all around the country, and everyone praised and lauded me for my tremendous efforts.  In this story, a state trooper should understand how I could fall into the trap of driving a little faster than the speed limit, and rather than giving me a ticket, he would bestow a special needs tag on my car that would allow me to drive as fast as I wanted without ever being stopped.

My self-righteousness and self-pity reflected the sad state of my heart. I withdrew from my daughter, at first refusing to receive her offers of grace.  Thankfully, the story isn’t catalogued under the title “Elizabeth’s Stupid Sin” because God’s story of grace trumps my sin.  The story unfolds in the good news of God’s pursuing love, incarnated in my daughter, who relentlessly hounded me with the sounds of heaven in encouraging me “to remember what a great trip we had” (and unspoken message: “Don’t ruin this memory for me, Mom!”). God did save me from ruining the story for my daughter, and this chapter will stand in our storybook on the page with other memories of God’s miraculous movement in our lives.