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Townhall...
New
Year, God’s Grace
by Jackie Gingrich Cushman
Dec 29, 2011
Last
night, after traveling from
Atlanta, my family and I arrived -- hungry and tired -- in Des Moines,
Iowa. We
are staying in the home of a friend who is out of town and decided to
order
pizza. I found a restaurant on Google Maps and called to place the
order, only
to be informed that I had reached the wrong location. The man on the
other end
of the line gave me the number of a different location, which I called.
The
promised delivery time was 45 minutes to an hour. Not too speedy, I
thought,
but good enough. I began to unpack for my husband, two children and
myself.
About
an hour later, driven by my
daughter’s pleas for food, I called the restaurant back to check on our
order.
The news that we were not in their delivery area and they could not/
would not
deliver was, let’s just say, not welcome.
A
call letting me know earlier would
have been helpful -- but oh, well.
I
next called Pizza Hut and, just in
case, put on water to boil for pasta.
Pizza
Hut delivered two medium pizzas
30 minutes later, the same time that the pasta was ready. It was 8:45
our time,
way past our normal dinnertime, but I was thankful that, at last, we
could eat.
Did
I mention that I don’t do well
when I’m very hungry? My husband laughs that, at the first mention of
my
hunger, he will immediately halt whatever he is doing to make sure that
I have
food. My mother carried crackers in her purse for me when I was young.
I can
literally feel my body stiffen and my mood darken as my hunger grows.
One
of my favorite stories is from my
20’s, when I was working in a small company in finance. After a
particularly
tough meeting with me, one of the executives began bringing me snacks
prior to
our meetings to make sure that my tendency to low blood sugar did not
create
any unintended consequences.
As
for last night’s pizza debacle, I’m
just happy that we all made it through this hunger crisis with relative
ease.
This is real progress.
This
simple example of pizza not being
delivered provides a window into how life often works: We make plans
and then
life happens. It is at these junctures that we get to determine how to
react.
My
goal this year has been to let
God’s grace shine through me under difficult circumstances. I’ve had
plenty of
opportunities to do just that. This year, we lost a beloved family
member, my
mother has been in and out of the hospital more times than I can count,
and my
dad (Newt Gingrich) is running for president. Sometimes I achieve my
goal of
letting God’s grace shine through me, but not always. Still, I keep
trying.
The
opportunities keep cropping up,
and they go beyond pizza. For example, people sometimes make
assumptions and
jump to wrong conclusions.
One
example is a column in which I
wrote about my mother asking for a divorce from my father. My column
was based
on my mother’s recollection and our recent discussions (my sister Kathy
reviewed as well). Recent news reports note that he filed the paperwork
for the
divorce, and they questioned my mother’s recollection and my recounting
of the
events.
The
truth is simple: They had a
troubled marriage; she asked for the divorce; he filed for divorce;
they got
divorced.
Our
family has moved on. After all,
it’s more than 30 years later.
Most
of my life, I’ve been able to use
my God-given gifts of intelligence, stamina and hard-headedness (from
both my
parents) to get things to work.
Now,
I’m learning that God is calling
for less me and more him. More prayer, more patience. Less my gifts,
more God’s
grace.
My
resolution for this coming year is
to spend more time in prayer and to continually ask for patience.
May
God hear my plea, help me accept
his grace and allow it to shine through me.
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