How Saying Grace Saves

 My husband and I were 10 yrs into marriage 2 kids deep and completely falling apart in our shared lives. We had recently just had our second child and relocated to a new home in hopes to restart fresh and start a new page in our marriage and family life. As you can already guess  or may know from your own experience changing location and circumstances, changes only location and circumstances. So we had no choice but to continue on pushing through with our day to day lives in hopes something someday would just click back into place for us. That “click” did come but from the most unexpected place. The grace of God passed down through the saying of grace from our little child.

 I was an unchurched Christian living through my prodigal days and my husband was, well, complicated. One thing we could agree on though is that once we had kids we wanted to be the kind of parents that takes their family to church (us both having missed that experience growing up). We never expected it to be so challenging to find a church that fit or felt right. Fast forward to our relocated lives with two kids, a toddler and a preschooler. We were looking for a reasonably priced preschool that fit our budget and schedules and to our luck and surprise a spot opened up at a local church preschool only 5 minutes from our home that met all our criteria. Our son went there but we still didn’t, except for the special Holiday services that he had to participate in. They taught him well and he learned fast. Letters,numbers and even tying his shoes. He also learned about Jesus. Lessons we ourselves weren’t quite ready to teach him. Lessons we ourselves needed so much to learn. Sitting at the dinner table each night we would always ask “ what did you learn at school today” and he would always respond “I don’t remember”. One such evening and one such inquiry he surprised us with “I can show you”. Our boy pushed his dinner plate forward, clasped his little hands, and bowed his head and said “I learned Grace can we say Grace?” My husband and I looked at each other eyes wide and flailing for a response to give our waiting son. We didn’t pray much and we definitely did NOT pray out loud or together but there he was waiting expectantly for us. This sweet baby boy we had prayed for, that we loved so much to endure a marriage that oftentimes felt unendurable because he was our heart and deserved so much more than a broken family or a broken home. So for our son's sake and under his watchful gaze we held hands and we prayed out loud for the first time ever that night saying grace and Thanking God for our family. Then we did it again the next evening. And the next. Saying Grace became easy. Going to church became an option. Our very first month attending there was a speaker explaining an upcoming  faith based marriage retreat. We went, God profoundly moved in our lives and in our marriage that weekend at the retreat. It was life changing.

We are 23 years into our marriage, 3 kids deep and our shared lives are held together by love, by the grace of God and yes by the saying of grace that we do still to this day, every chance we get.

By Leeanna Lopez