Grace Like.... Taco Salad

While I'm publishing stuff that's sat in draft form for way too long, here's another old post that I never published.

Re-reading it brought a smile to my face.

I hope it does the same for you. :)

Today's been quite a day. But it's been full of grace... grace I didn't deserve. Not only is God far kinder than I deserve, but so are people in my life!

Today really started with yesterday, when my car broke down as I was leaving an emergency ultrasound appointment with a client. The car started acting funny, then funnier, then downright scary when I managed to jerk into a nearby church parking lot before it totally stopped working. Dad and Sam were so kind to come to my rescue and bring me over to Mom and Dad's 31rst wedding anniversary celebration that I was missing!

Today, Abe loaded up the car and hauled it home. The days of the good old green car may be numbered. (I bought it less than a year ago.) It seems like the transmission AND an axle decided to have major problems at the same time. Oh yes... and the brakes. That's after the $500 repair on something else last month.

I do drive the poor thing a lot.

Anyway, my dad graciously agreed to let me use his car til we can fix mine (if it's worth doing that) or figure out a Plan B. So, he unloaded his tools from the work car this morning and handed me the keys.

My mother kindly made the seven trips from the house to the car loading all of my birth and prenatal bags, charts, oxygen tank and all of the other midwife supplies that have to accompany me everywhere I go. I was upstairs, replying to urgent legislative emails when she brought me a fresh fruit smoothie before I ran out the door. My mom doesn't have to be that nice. She just is.

I headed off to do prenatals, finding that this car has all of the quirks that Dad warned me about, plus a few other problems. But it runs, and it works in drive and reverse. I learned that the brakes work minimally and one should start braking a block away from the upcoming stop light. Thankfully, I learned that on a gravel road this morning when a large cow trailer stopped suddenly on the road in front of me and I slid gently into it, stomping hard on the brakes.

Dad's car looks so awful that it's almost hilarious! I definitely look like a charity case or a drug dealer (take your pick) pulling up at people's house.

So, away I went in my lovely car. I stopped by a former client's house to return some books she'd loaned me last fall. She looked soooo happy to see me, and scooped up her sweet little girl and put her in my arms. "Isn't she beautiful?! I've missed you!!!" and a hundred other things tumbled out of her mouth. The client who never chatted or said much beside the necessary stuff at prenatals. I thought she didn't particularly like me. Some days I wondered if she just wasn't the emotional or friendly type. But today, she almost cried that I had stopped to see her, and she had to show me all of her baby's pictures on her digital camera. I realized for the first time that she really did like me a lot, and she counted me among her good friends.

My happiness was short-lived though, when I arrived at my Amish client's house to find that she wasn't there. With no phone to call her and re-schedule, it could be tricky to catch her at home in the next couple days. So I wrote her a note and left it on the kitchen table.

I got a text from another client: "Did I have an appointment at your office at 10?"

I groaned. I must not have wrote her appointment down in my schedule book after we'd be emailing and she had rescheduled it... great. Now, she had driven a long way for her appointment, and had taken off work. This was just not .... good. She'd have to sit there all morning waiting for me to get there from Amish country and she needed to get back to work.

I thought fast and told her to go back to work and I'd make up by coming for an evening home visit. I knew she wasn't happy and I had just messed up her whole day. I apologized. She said it was okay, but I could hear in her voice that it wasn't okay. I felt horrible. But, there was nothing left to do... So, I went on with the day's errands and headed to the office.

One of my clients told me that she wanted me to keep the extra $200 that they'd paid me. Really?

Then I did initial visits for several new clients - and I love them!

And then regular prenatals. A baby that has been breech for awhile is now vertex! Grace.

Thank you, God.

And then I met my sister at the sonographer's for her ultrasound. Some of it looked better than we had hoped. Some looked a little concerning. Grace.

Then I rushed to the town where my client lives who'd come to the office in vain that morning. She invited me for a dinner of taco salad with her and her husband. A much better choice than fast food or the handful of almonds I still had in my car. Grace. I'd just missed her appointment this morning, and she had felt horrible the whole day, and the drive had made her feel worse... and yet, they served me taco salad with a smile. And we talked about her upcoming birth, and her mom, and her hopes and fears. Grace. Big grace.

And then I drove the old white boat of a car home, listening to the Ipod that another client gave me several years ago. And I thought about Grace...

Getting what I don't deserve. That's me. That's my life. That's my God!