Daring Grace: 4 Sacred Dares to Wake, Parent and Live Loved Every Ordinary Day

By Caz Webber

What if you could transform your daily life simply by waking up to a word called Grace?

Imagine if everyday you could wake up more peaceful, more loved, and more captivated by the ordinary moments in your daily life?

What if you could reject your feelings of 'never good enough', heal your tox

• Language: English
• Publisher: Caz Webber
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645288117

Book preview

Introduction

Got much on today? the teenager at Coles asked me this morning, scanning my shampoo and cornflakes.

I decided to tell her. Just finishing my book, last chapter, I said.

You don’t hear that much these days, she responded. People writing books.

I agreed. I didn’t personally know many authors.

What’s it on? she questioned.

Grace, I decided to be all in and share.

Pardon?

I leaned around her screen. Grace, I said a bit louder. It’s one of God’s greatest gifts, and nobody ever really talks about it.

She smiled with sunshine, like she understood, but I wondered if she did. Philip Yancey, author of What’s So Amazing About Grace? says grace is our last best word, but is it also our lost best word.

For decades I have quoted sacred words about grace, but I had no idea how to apply grace in my ordinary life. What is grace? What is grace beyond the closing of eyes and the bowing of heads to acknowledge God at the dinner table? What is grace beyond the cross and the salvation of our souls? Where is grace in messy and mundane days? Is it present in our daily lives, or is it mostly unseen and out of reach?

Grace could be a word familiar and friendly within our workplaces, churches, families, friendships, and parenting, but we know it is not. We should carry grace in our handbags, tattoo it on our wrists, and shout it from the rooftops, but for lack of awareness—we do not.

One thing I know for sure is grace is not cultural. It’s the opposite of how most of us are raised, trained, and practice our faith. It’s hard to find in any curriculum, program, or institution. It seems our minds war with grace because the notion of it is so abstract and foreign.

Questioning grace automatically raises questions about God and His nearness in our daily lives. If we find grace, will we find God? I don’t think anyone can adequately describe the wonder of grace, but I have tried from the perspective of my daily life. It’s too good to leave on distant sacred shelves. The mystery of it invites us, even dares us to explore it courageously.

I can look back over the last decade or so and realize that I was scribing my theology about God and His grace. My messy daily life collided with my faith, and it wasn’t pretty. The way I had practiced my faith for years wasn’t working anymore. It didn’t fit. I desperately wanted it to, but I found myself failing in my idea of Jesus-following more than I was flourishing. What was I doing wrong? What had I got wrong? I knew God enough that I didn’t want to let Him go. I didn’t know Him enough to understand why I was wrestling in my daily life. In reflection, I’ve lived deeply asleep to the goodness of God. The last decade or so has been a gentle yet relentless shaking awake.

When I began writing this book, I was very conscious that my daily life was my primary source, teacher, and classroom for grace. A month out from its first editing deadline, I discovered a book by theologian Serena Jones, Call It Grace. I devoured her chapters, tracing Jones’ own life story with grace. Her words were like an arm around my shoulder, saying, You’ve got this, hun. You don’t have to get all of it to have it.

Jones’s book permitted me to use the word theology confidently and to realize we don’t have to understand all of God to find peace with Him. She defines theology as simply trying to rise above religion’s rules and structures to ask meaningful questions. Theology is the place and the story you think of when you ask yourself about the meaning of your life, of the world, and the possibility of God, writes Jones. Theology is simply speech and words about God.

We are all scribing our own theologies, our own stories about God in our lives, even if we never pick up a pen and start a book. Our experiences and stories anchor our beliefs, our daily practices, our perspectives on the world, and our view of God. My stories in this book have overflowed from years of raising daughters, bottomless washing baskets, and batches of over-ripe-banana choc-chip muffins. God kept showing up enough to help me make sense of my messy ordinary life. Grace has been a big part of the cleanup.

This book is for you if:

You parent more aware of failure and worry than peace.

You wake with unexplained shadows of heaviness and discouragement.

There is a frustrating gap between your daily life and your religious beliefs and practices.

There is flicker of faith in your heart that has never quite let go of God and His promises.

My prayer is that by the end of this book you are so inspired by grace, so intrigued by grace, you dare to look for it everywhere. I pray its nearness will weave itself into your first waking breaths, into your hardest parenting moments, and your life’s most ordinary, yet beautiful gifts.

Grace wants to be named by you. It wants to be found, like the deliciously overpriced giant vanilla sundae you just walked past in your local food court. It’s covered wickedly in rich, thick, warm chocolate fudge sauce, a sprinkling of toasted almonds, and full deep red strawberries. Surely, it’s not for you? Or is it? Is the longing in our weary souls for grace, and we just don’t know it? We cannot hope to whip it up in our own kitchens, even if we try, but Someone is offering it to us for free. Dare we accept the invitation and awaken to what I like to call ‘daily grace’?

How This Book Works

I have designed this book to be an unfolding journey of grace in your own daily life. Mark it, underline it, scribble notes and questions through it. Make it yours. You may be as personally daring, contemplative, or creative as your season allows. For the most transformational experience, I recommend an art diary for creativity and journaling. A lined journal is adequate. Each chapter has a variety of suggested ‘Daily Dares’ at its conclusion.

You can approach this book in a variety of ways including visiting my website www.cazwebber.com.au for the latest supportive resources.

1. Read quickly and return to the dares at a later date.

2. Read slowly and simultaneously work through the dares.

3. Gather a small group of friends to workshop chapters and dares together.

What You Need

Intervals of quiet time

A sketchbook (optional but recommended) or journal

A variety of art materials (optional but recommended)

A Bible

With daily blessings of grace and peace,

PART ONE: YESTERDAY’S GRACE

Unaware

There is a rising rumble, like a midnight train approaching through the wastelands. Not only do we hear it from the distance, but we can feel it if we put our hands on the ground or in the water or in the torn bread and poured out wine. The rumour in the deep places of our souls is that there is a party going on, and we can scarce trust our invitation. Could there ever be a toast raised to us? Might a hand reach out and lead us into the divine dance, whispering in our ears that we were always made for this? And so we wait for the kiss, the breath in and out that awakens our sleeping hearts to life. We were made for this, utterly found within Relentless Affection.

•

WILLIAM PAUL YOUNG

ONE

Wandering

We never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us.

OSWALD CHAMBERS

Anything But Sacred

The residue of a late pancake breakfast lingered in the air, on the table, in the sink. Maple syrup, warm stove-top berries, drips of buckwheat batter, and sticky plates. For years pancakes have been a family ritual on the weekend. I took milestone photos of my babies eating their first plain one. Then as they grew older, I would add a dribble of warm berries and eventually a small dollop of ice cream. They would smile wide with purple-stained lips.

I stood at the kitchen sink again, rubber-gloved hands in dirty soapy water. I love creating from-the-heart food for us all, but this morning my mind was more aware of the mess in front of me, still to be dealt with, still to come. Unexpected tears were suddenly sliding down my cheeks, like tiny, silent streams. I wiped them awkwardly away with my arms, my hands dripping the soapy water over myself. The older girls played Snakes and Ladders at the table. For now, they were peaceful. I could hear the washing machine humming, spinning around and around with another load that would need to be pegged to the line, only to be sorted, folded, and distributed into rooms and drawers again, and again and again.

I was too aware of the mess, the list of jobs that never ceased, and it was the weekend. The weekend! I longed to leave it all, forget I was Mum for just a little while, but I couldn’t yet pause the relentless yet mundane demands of a houseful of young daughters. I grabbed a tissue from the window sill and continued to wipe down benches for the ten-thousandth time in a decade. Ruby wasn’t even crawling yet. She would need me any minute where she played on the floor. I was tired, maybe I was hormonal, or maybe the rain pouring outside washed me into vulnerable places again. This mess and ordinariness felt anything but sacred, anything but holy, anything but God-present. It didn’t mean it wasn’t.

Matt was near, seeing my tears and offering to help, and this time I really was okay when I said so. I was changing, realizing, awakening. My tears weren’t terribly painful, just brutally honest. I paused, watching, listening to the rain, noticing the pure diamond droplets on the window, the dancing of water in the pool. I think the tears were washing away a little more of the ugly I had unknowingly nurtured over the years. It was almost all gone, and in its place was a blossoming garden of wonder. It had been there all along, within me, given already, like the wild eucalypt forest I’d only just discovered near our home.

For four years, the winding, broad path on the edge of suburbia near our home was a mystery to us. When we first moved in, I had quickly mapped a morning walk circuit around our estate, my soft mummy body appreciating the good hills and quiet roads. I think our dog, Hugo, could walk it blindfolded. Most days, I drove past the entrance to the forest, never looking in or wondering what was beyond the yellow concrete post that guarded the entry like a little proud parent.

Until one day, a neighbor showed my older girls the way. They came home later, talking of a bush track, an abandoned car, and rough dirt mounds made for bikes. They explained that it was just up the paved bike path next to our house, around the corner and across one busy main road. Still, I couldn’t fathom a path worth exploring until weeks later.

Intentionally the girls and I walked past that little yellow post into wild, overgrown bush beauty. It was a broad paved path, winding through a tall ghost gum eucalyptus forest. The right side of the path backed up against suburban yards; the left side of the path was a collision of nature with urbanization.

Fallen trees, long grass, and Australian native scrub were the playground for screeching parrots but also for the neighborhood kids who had labored to form the dirt mounds for their fast bike fun. The abandoned car hinted of mischief and rebellion. But feather stump was shared by the locals, positioning rejected bird feathers into its lengths of split bark.

The tire swing hanging from an immense tree on the edge of a spacious grass field would become a childhood reference point for my girls. Sometimes we would see grazing kangaroos in the field or ducks on the dam in its sloping corner. We discovered we could walk all the way up, pause on the hill to view our surrounding streets and sports ovals, and it was the safest way to get to soccer practice on bikes.

How had I lived here so long and never known this place existed? How I wish I had known about it through the weeks of COVID lockdown. When I mentioned it to friends, they nodded. Of course, they knew about it. A path of peace and beauty was daily near, and I had just lived completely unaware, almost like asleep.

Instead, I had lived completely aware and immersed in the daily domesticity of caring for my five daughters. Mess had seemed to grow wildly and spontaneously, like my eucalypt forest, at the mercy of little hands and hungry mouths. I joke now about toilet training for a decade, but somedays it really wasn’t very funny. I look at the lines on my face and question if a few babies less would have kept me looking younger.

However, maybe if it wasn’t for these long days of sticky fingers, dish-sprawled benchtops, and continual batches of playdough, I wouldn’t know God the way I do now. I wouldn’t have fallen to my knees on the kitchen floor more than once. I wouldn’t have paid attention to the hungering and thirsting of my soul for something more, or was it Someone more, beyond what I could see and touch? I wouldn’t have questioned one of the greatest spiritual gifts poured out upon this earth. I wouldn’t have woken up to the simple, yet profound sacredness of our daily ordinary lives.

Ordinary Sacredness

I have three really clear memories from my childhood when I think of the word sacred. The Cambridge dictionary defines sacred using the words holy, respect, and a connection with a god. Sacred hints at spirituality, an awareness of holiness, and a connection beyond ourselves with objects, beings, places, and spaces.

Once, as a young child, I walked through the coolness of our tiny citrus orchard. The sinking afternoon sun cast dark shadows upon me. The grass was always soft and thick in the orchard, and my dirty bare feet sunk deep. I was alone and walked softly, singing gentle childish words I no longer remember. My brown eyes, I used to call them moldy chocolate-chip-cookie colored, were open to the leaves and the light, but my young soul was seeing, sensing something beyond the earth right then.

This may have been my first awareness of sacredness. I felt a connection with this place beyond the natural. I sensed a presence with me, to who I could lift a soft voice. It was an ordinary moment, filled with ordinary sensations, ordinary surroundings, yet it was sacred. Ordinary sacred. I wouldn’t ponder ordinary sacredness for another 30 years.

My family were campers. Rough and cheap. Some would call it real camping. Tall pine trees created a carpet of pine needles for our large family tent. There were nasty drop toilets that we mostly avoided, only using when completely necessary. We carried water from the nearby creek and boiled it before drinking. My parents were mostly worry-free, and my siblings and I often explored the creek beds and nearby waterfalls on our own as we grew older.

For a couple of years, I visited a seemingly insignificant little place. I discovered it one time, walking down the gently flowing creek bed. I loved scrambling over the green-covered rocks and finding thick vines to swing from. In the middle of a naturally clear pool rested a solid round rock. It wasn’t very large, and growing out of its moss-covered center was a small fern. It captured my childish imagination, its appearance so like a little island, and I would return to this place. I would seek it out and sit quietly, not for long, but long enough to pause and feel the uniqueness of the place. Birds and quiet, running water, and lush green companions. It was another brush with ordinary sacredness for my seeking child soul.

We were also beach lovers. My dad tanned darkly, and with a shout, he would launch himself into the waves with an inelegant splash. My sister and I could play for hours in the surf. We weren’t afraid of tall waves, and we learned to flush the sand out of our swimmers after a good roll and tumble into the shore.

Every Easter for years we returned to our favorite holiday waters up the coast. On the sleepy shores of a palm tree-lined lake, we progressed from camping to a basic cabin on the lake. We spent long days in the shallow waters, in bright yellow canoes with best friends and new friends. But now and then, I would slip away to walk the lakeshore by myself, stepping over strands of waving seaweeds and eventually finding that perfect paperbark tree branch to sit on for a while. The water, its calming voice and gentle rolling movements, was a peaceful friend to me.

A half-decent walk up the campsite’s driveway and across the road brought us to