Best Of | The Grit and Grace Project

Having Faith Over Fear in a Scary World

Two days before my husband and I left for a bucket-list Alaskan cruise, North Korean’s mass-murdering dictator Kim Jon-un announced he had a nuclear missile that could reach Alaska. My heart leapt in my chest when I heard that stunning news. We went anyway, and tried not to think about that possibility. While we were on the cruise, we booked another one that begins and ends in Barcelona. And then…Islamic terrorists killed 12 people and injured nearly 100 more who were innocently and joyfully sightseeing along a pedestrian mall in Barcelona that is popular with tourists. A place we might very well be walking. Once again, we went anyway. Going back a few years, I remember that the week before my first […]

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Are You Believing These 7 Lies About Your Son?

By Kitti Murray / Motherhood, Best Of

The origin of this post is a mystery. Does this list come from my observation of our granddaughters and my recent speculation about what my life might have been like had I had a girl, just one? (FYI: I never really wanted a daughter, but these precious girls make me wonder why not.) Or does it spring from my wonderment these days at how utterly different my husband—classic boy—is from me? We’ve been married 35 years, and I am discovering that the divide between us is wider than I ever dreamed it was. The divide, that is, between how we think and feel and process the world around us. The divide that has been there all along, covered in fog like Cloudland

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4 Lessons on Failure I Learned from My Kids

By Kitti Murray / Motherhood, Best Of

I’ve learned that failure can be a time-release sort of blessing. We bide our time through the pang of it until it does what we know it can eventually do if we let God use it: transform everything. When my husband Bill lost his job, it hurt a lot. It felt like a failure. This came at the end of the last recession, after quite a few good friends lost their high-level, high-paying jobs and had to live on their savings. Bill’s job was neither high-level nor high-paying (which means we had next to nothing saved), but it was what he loved, and thus it was a blow. Today we both affirm that his job loss was the best thing that could

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Because of Skylar

By Ashley Jones / Motherhood, Best Of

This is the final piece of a four part series of a young mother’s story. We were so captivated by her journey we knew you would be too. Read the first three sections of the series, here: Part 1 Life Before Skylar, Part 2 Life With Skylar, and Part 3 Life After Skylar. Our life, even with bogus medical bills and special needs, was rich and full. We were so thankful that we had 21 wonderful months with our baby girl before having to say goodbye. Shortly after Skylar died, I remember standing in our driveway waiting for my dog to pee in the grass. It was a late summer afternoon, and I was doing my best to soak up the sun while my dog walked in circles. Vitamin

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Life With Skylar

By Ashley Jones / Motherhood, Best Of

This is part two of a four part series of a young mother’s story. We were so captivated by her journey we knew you would be too. Find part 1 here. As I left the doctor’s office, my heart sank. I knew the specialist discovered something terrible and wouldn’t tell me. Thirty minutes after walking out of his office, the phone rang. It was our pediatrician. I was sure the specialist called him as soon as I left, and now he was calling me to confirm my fears. The first words I heard were, “Ashley, it’s not good.” With our daughter being a month and a half old, and seemingly mentally alert, in my head, the worst case scenario was a lifetime of

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Life Before Skylar

By Ashley Jones / Motherhood, Best Of

This is part one of a four part series of a young mother’s story. We were so captivated by her journey we knew you would be too. BS. That was my life before Skylar—total BS. I thought I had my priorities in the right place. I loved my husband (most of the time), and wanted to have three kids to form our perfect little family. I imagined two girls and one boy playing in our green yard, contained in a safe little bubble in the form of a white picket fence… I look back now and just laugh. I was ignorant, selfish, and terribly insecure. Change is hard. Most times, it comes with growing pains—sometimes even suffering. It forces you to face

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