I’m in the nesting phase. Thankfully, The Husband is too–we’ve spent the last few weekends visiting stores and amassing materials for The Kid’s room and the house in general. TH has, over the past few months, completed multiple projects: painted three rooms, constructed two bookcases, decked out our porch and lawn for Halloween, installed a wall-hung television, assembled a crib and dresser and changing table and chair, and hooked up a ceiling fan. Meanwhile, I have written thank-you notes and selected lamp shades. Oh…and endured an alien takeover of my body.

Our weekly excursions to Home Goods and Babies ‘R Us and the like have left us with an abundance of possessions meant to sustain our new family. And as our material goods reach their zenith, I read an email about the apartment complex where our church does outreach and I hear a four-year-old abuse the English language–about how eight of the units were destroyed by fire, affecting forever the lives of almost fifty people and rendering them without beds and clothes and food. Without almost anything, really. I type with my numb fingers and sit on my sciatica-plagued ass while pain radiates through my shoulders and look around at the embarrassment of riches with which I am blessed: a husband who provides in every way imaginable, a child who is already named and loved, a community of family and friends. Beds, clothes, food.

On Saturday night, after a banquet of Chili’s takeout, The Husband hauled up our extra queen bed and mattress from the basement and loaded it into the car for delivery the next day to people who currently have no place to sleep. I sat on the couch, playing immobile cheerleader as The Kid turned backflips. I thought about my life prior to this stage of domesticity; the constant-seeming removal of people and things, how unjust it all felt until their ultimate replacement came along and a better plan emerged. I thought about how, on media like Facebook, we say things like, “God is good” when something happens that we define as positive; I thought about the path that is directed by grace, that takes you a distance you never thought you’d travel so that you can look back at not only triumphs but at heartbreak and loss and still say it–that he’s good. No matter what. A grace that takes away and gives back and can be called love either way. Grace that stretches our limits and makes us uncomfortable but refuses to let us go. Grace that always delivers.