I didn’t get what I deserved, but I certainly fully received what I had been taught.
Grace swept over me and unleashed its power connecting both with my head and and my heart.
The only way I can describe it is that grace is the gift of a big exhale. — Holding one’s breath and waiting for what most certainly should come to receiving a “get free pass” that one would absolutely not expect.
That grace moment propelled my life in a new direction.
I confessed my sins, I cleaned up my act, and I charted a new course fanned by the winds of grace and truth spoken in love.
My father was right, I did choose a hard path and there were struggles ahead, but when I look into my son’s beautiful eyes, I am so glad I made the right choice, after I made a wrong one.
Through the years, and because of grace, I have served many unwed teen moms and even incarcerated moms teaching them the lessons I have learned regarding truth and grace while spoken in love.
Here is one of my mottos, which I have shared weekly with the incarcerated moms: A leopard cannot change its spots, but I assure you that a caterpillar can turn into a butterfly.
Grace has the power to change one within which unleashes the feeling of freedom and propels one in a positive direction. Not the opposite.
In our film, “Because of Grácia,” one of the characters, Bobbi Ryan, faces a test similar to the one that Maddi Runkles and I and millions of other young women have faced.
We also tell the story of another young woman, Grácia, who makes better choices.
In both cases, God is glorified in the end because grace and mercy triumph over death and destruction — and while our paths may be easier when we make the right choices, God is there to gently restore when we stray.
Publicly shaming Maddi Runkles and not allowing her to walk in her graduation ceremonies will not change anyone else for the better, just as having allowed her to participate in graduation ceremonies would not have likely prompted young girls to get pregnant.
Shame didn’t teach me. Grace did. And I didn’t learn grace by hearing about it, but by being the recipient of it.
Maddi’s life may be far more difficult than her classmates who will wait and do things in God’s proper time and order. But letting them walk together could have been a God-honoring moment that communicated grace, not license to sin and a reminder that grace doesn’t glorify sin, it simply covers it and glorifies God.