P.A.'s Life Story continues . . . 

The Space for Grace

BY P.A. ISAKSON

   Pausing beside the car in front of the courthouse, she gazed westward.  Purples and pinks intertwined with the deepening sapphire sky of approaching nightfall. Closing her eyes she breathed in the cool, early summer air and savored the stillness.  Her husband moved around the front of the vehicle and embraced her tightly.  Tears threatened to spill and the lump in her throat made it difficult to breathe, let-alone speak. 

   "Thank you for being here for me Sweetheart," she whispered hoarsely.  "I love you."

   He continued the light hold as he stroked her hair.  "I love you too.  We'll see you in ten days."  Finally loosening his grip he kissed and then released her.  Eyes glistening, she smiled wanly up at him and nodded.  

   Deftly she opened the car door to her tail-wagging puppy, and quickly burying her face into his neck she kissed the top of his head and admonished him to be good.

   She grasped her husband in one last, quick embrace, turned, and walked brusquely through the heavy steel doors of the County Jail to serve her sentence.  It would be her home for the next ten days.  

   Difficult events in her early childhood had left her with a deep-rooted fear of abandonment and the resulting constant compulsion to perfection and people pleasing.  She had determined early-on that she would never need, trust, or be told what to do, by anyone else ever again.  She would make it totally on her own. 

   But in every dimension of her life she had been driven by the voices in her head, telling her that it was never enough.  Her banking career didn’t pay enough.  Her children didn’t behave well-enough.  The house was never clean enough.   She wasn't giving, working, Christian, organized, patient or good-looking enough.

   And then there was her husband.  What had begun as a love-story that could’ve rivaled any steamy romance novel, had become a marriage that wasn’t enough either.   

   But grace changed things.  It had changed her heart, her spirit and her mind.  Most-of-all, it had endowed her with a power and authority that had changed her life.

Shivering in the gray security-lamplight, she tried to tuck the worn wool blanket closer around her.  From her mattress-covered steel bed in the dormitory-style jail cell, she watched the silent rain drops trickle down the reinforced window above her.  A warm, salty tear slid unbidden from her wrinkled green eyes.  Only three days had been crossed off the calendar since she arrived and it had been a particularly difficult day.  Screaming, fighting and crying amongst her cellmates and then in defiance against the Guards had resulted in harsh disciplinary actions for everyone.  And the weight of the searing pain in these women’s souls was draining.  

   "Forgive me for the tears, Father," she whispered in her spirit.  "I'm just so very tired . . . I know You are with me.  Please fill this place with Your grace and give me the strength I need to persevere in this dreadful place . . . “.

   As a peaceful balm began to soothe her aching heart, she rolled onto her side and closed her eyes.  Raw though it was to remember how she, a middle-aged wife, Grandmother and businesswoman-turned-homemaker, had arrived behind the cold steel doors of a County Jail, she still allowed it to the forefront of her thoughts again.

   She was a Christian whose sin – regardless of the motivations, excuses or causes – had insidiously nearly destroyed her life.  Until she was finally able to make the space for grace.  And grace had stepped in. 

   The affair with the bottle had seemed to begin innocently enough.  The occasional wine-cooler and a night-on-the-town, had quelled the voices of unfulfilled expectations, discontent, anger, frustration, rejection, shame, guilt and the ever-present fear - always the fear - for brief segments of time.  But the rendezvous’ became more frequent and more intense.

   Until the time came that she realized it had gone too far.  She found herself time-and-again slipping precariously close to the edge of the tarry black pit of regret, confusion and depression.  Still she clung to her Lover in a frantic attempt to pour serenity over her parched soul.

   Years passed, and the insanity continued to spin, teetering like a children’s top, until one day, after a particularly tumultuous rendezvous with her Lover, she recognized that the misshapen face of her Lover, had become her enemy.  And she no longer had the strength to slam on the brakes.  Her carefully-applied façade of control and confidence gave way and imprisoned her in a pit of depression and despair that was far worse than any jail cell could ever be.  As she slid helplessly headlong into the pit, she had closed her eyes and resigned.  Evil had won.  That round.  That time.

   Until she made the space for grace.  And grace stepped in, scooped her into his strong embrace, and carried her over the threshold of fear and into the bright light of freedom from the tyranny of her enemy.