Small wonders

Editor’s note: Kara Tippetts has stage 4 (terminal) cancer.

For years I sought to embrace the season of young children rather than just survive it, but I was continually meeting my limitations. I saw the high calling of mothering, but I felt every edge and frustration. Living within the confines of my own strength, I could not see the big love of God ready to meet me as I shepherded my children.

Having my guy in seminary for years and years helped us to embrace living in the little moments. We learned the art of swinging for hours, cooking together, and living simply. I joke that we couldn’t afford baby sitters so we decided to raise children we enjoyed being near. We have done all of life with our four children, and that life has been rich.

We decided early that ministry would happen with them, too. We would pray for discernment, but we wanted our children to see life lived honestly around our dinner table. We often shared our meals with the desperately brokenhearted, and my children learned the beauty of the broken. They understood our favorite meals could be salted by the tears of our guests. Sometimes they entered the conversations, sometimes they sat quietly and ate the meal before them.

Then one July day, we became the broken family that needed to be captured and cared for. We had just lived through the Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, thinking we were ready to begin building our ministry from the literal ashes of so much destruction, when the destruction entered our home. Two weeks after the fire, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

We thought my pastor-husband and I would help the broken, but Jesus planned for us to be the broken. We opened our hands to our strength and grasped the weakness handed to us. From the despair, beauty was born. We were invited to dine at the table of those who came with us and salt our every meal with our own tears.

Two years have passed since that original diagnosis. The news has not gotten better. Cancer has found new corners of my body in which to take up residence. But so has God’s grace. From the place of being broken and needy, we looked for Jesus to walk with us. And He did.

I have asked God to make my love abound more and more as my outward body fades (Philippians 1:9–11). I have asked this for my life and for the lives around us. I have seen God grow kindness in grumpy hearts, renew love where love was dry, and pour out grace—such grace into a community that understands we wake each morning needy. Our neediness has become our strength. We wake needing God’s grace, Jesus’ presence, and to walk in a way that allows our love to abound more and more. It’s stunning, absolutely stunning, to see a community of the beautifully broken seek daily bread to survive.

I used to wake anxious when I heard the patter of feet coming toward my side of the bed, not wanting my sleep interrupted. Now, I hear the gentle patter and rejoice in the opportunity to smother one of my little loves in kisses and snuggles, praying that my love will carry them long past my last breath.

I get to love my children and my guy with this abounding love that comes from Jesus. But I also get to meet my last breath knowing a much greater love will meet my family. The abounding love I know from Jesus will love them long past my last moment on this side of eternity—and that love will be breathtaking. More and more, abundance and grace meet us where my body is becoming less and less. That is grace. I never deserved to know such abounding love, but it is ours in Jesus. Can you ask Jesus for the same?

—Kara Tippetts, author of The Hardest Peace (David C. Cook, 2014), writes regularly on her blog, Mundane Faithfulness