Best Of | The Grit and Grace Project

Unplanned Pregnancy—the Tale of Two Girls

By Darlene Brock / Life & Culture, Best Of

I was a teen in the early years of Roe v. Wade when a significant cultural change began. I don’t think we realized then how much impact a decision made by seven Justices of the Supreme Court would have on our lives. Pregnancy wasn’t ever present in our minds, but it was something we were trying to avoid, often rather ineffectively, given this was also the era of “free love.” In those years, an unwanted pregnancy had even more impact on a female’s life than it does today. Girls were labeled, often looked down upon, which didn’t make a lot of sense since they were not alone in their activity. They merely experienced the possible consequences that many others risked. It was […]

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This Will Make You Question Why You Judge New Christians

By Darlene Brock / Best Of, Faith

I have a question for all who share my faith, for my brothers and sisters in the family of God; something that has troubled me for a very long time. Why do we want to disprove someone’s faith? How often has a celebrity, convicted felon, politician, or person of notoriety made a statement of faith and our community feels the need to get involved? What are we trying to accomplish by diminishing another’s faith? We usually have one of two responses; the first is to make that individual the poster child of God’s followers. A pressure no one needs. The second, which has broken my heart many times, is that we explain—at great length, in every public forum available—why that person’s faith

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My Really Different Kind of Family

By Ashby Duval / Best Of, Relationships

My new husband, my new baby, and my son from my first marriage just got back from visiting my dead husband’s parents on our vacation. Did you get all of that? Yeah, that’s a lot to take in so let me back up a bit. Six years and two months ago, my beautiful, gregarious, hilarious husband, Spencer, literally died in my arms. He was 34 years old, seemingly healthy and in shape, and there were absolutely no warning signs. He had an enlarged heart, and we had no idea. His entire family was visiting us in Florida from Minnesota for Mother’s Day. I was five and a half months pregnant with our first child. We were staying at the Hyatt Regency hotel with his

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How to Flip the Script on Your Infertility Journey

By Frances M. Davis / Faith, Best Of

A quick Google search will tell you that one in eight couples struggle with infertility. I never imagined we would be one of them. And, once diagnosed, I never contemplated this leg of my life’s journey would take years. This is our fifth attempt at in vitro fertilization (IVF). The first was a canceled cycle, where my body didn’t respond to medication. In the second, we lost four embryos—three of them after they were transferred into my womb. The third cycle, like the first, was canceled. In the fourth, we were filled with hope at the prospects of our sole embryo. I was convinced we would defy the statistical odds. Instead, we got another negative pregnancy test. The disappointment has become familiar.

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Overcoming Shame from Abuse in a Grit and Grace Life

By Karen DeVault / Best Of, Health & Beauty, Purpose

If you were a victim of child abuse or neglect like me, you very likely have experienced or do experience some level of shame. In my case, it plagued me for many years, yet I had no idea what it even was. Shame from abuse is hard to pin down because it assumes many forms. But it has the same message. It tells us that we are inferior, a mistake, fundamentally flawed. Shame is not the same as guilt. Shame focuses on self. Guilt focuses on behavior. Shame says that “I am bad.” Guilt says that “I did something bad.” Instead of saying “I made a mistake,” a person who experiences shame says that “I am a mistake.” Think of shame as

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Married to the Badge Not Your Typical Life

Married to the Badge: View from a Police Officer Wife

By Kristi Neace / Best Of, Life & Culture

Growing up, I could never have imagined that I would one day be a police officer’s wife, married to a walking badge in polyester black. No, the silly games I played pointed to my future husband as a banker or a doctor, someone who made a decent living working a “normal” job like everyone else. I guess I wore those same rose-colored glasses as I imagined and planned out dinners at 5:00 PM each day, holidays with family gatherings, spur-of-the-moment get-a-ways, sleeping blissfully in my lover’s arms at night without a care in the world, and a “Better Homes and Gardens” type boudoir with not a stitch out of place. What I received? I received the polar opposite of my imaginary dreams.

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Dear Parents of Millennials: It’s Time to Stop It

By Teresa Christian / Work & Money, Best Of, Motherhood

Dear sweet, sweet parents of Millennials (those precious little snowflakes born around 1980-2000, give or take a year or two) As the parent of two Millennials myself, and a Human Resources professional, I have a few words of advice for you: Let. Them. Go. I routinely read in HR career magazines and blog stories about how parents step in on behalf of their children. We’ve been doing that their entire lives, and it seems that it’s too difficult to quit. Here are examples I recently read. A father called his son’s employer to ask that his son be given a pay increase. A mom called to say that her child was sick and unable to come to an interview. Another parent called

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Life After Skylar

By Ashley Jones / Motherhood, Best Of

This is part three 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 two sections of the series, here: Part 1 Life Before Skylar and Part 2 Life With Skylar. After losing my daughter, and being intentional about experiencing the full depth of pain that came with it, I was questioning my decision to avoid anti-depressants. The heartbreak was too much. It was like that time when I was in the middle of hard labor and told my husband and my doula I wanted an epidural… and they told me the next contraction was coming and I needed to breathe deep, pretending not to hear me. I wanted

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Having Faith Over Fear in a Scary World

By Clare Marlow / Best Of, Faith

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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