Game Face and Grace

I have several close people in my life who are in the midst of some lonely private struggles.  I feel like I have been in my own lonely private struggle for a while and so I find myself particularly sensitive to these souls right now.   Job losses, prodigal children, difficult marriages, difficult pregnancies, difficult transitions, widowhood ... there are things you expect to be lonely, but some of the worst times are when other people either don't know or can't know the struggle.  Satan loves it when we are in those places.  It is a battle of the mind to remind yourself of Truth on a regular basis.  
"Children are a heritage from the Lord"  (Ps 127:3) 
"Seven times a righteous man falls, seven times he gets up"  (Prov 24:16)
"The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry"  (Prov 10:3)
" We know that all things work together for the good to them that love God" (Rom 8:28).

The other day I called one of these friends and said to her amidst my own tears,  "please just tell me that the Lord is going to make something beautiful of this!"   She did tell me, of course, and it was a little better.  It has made me think though, how we all need to be doing that for each other, even before the person asks, because who knows that they are not in their own private hell that we know nothing of.  Maybe the grumpy clerk in the store or the driver who just cut you off is just trying to make it through the day.  Maybe more than our chastisement they need our mercy.

We are studying Ephesians in our small group right now, and two little words have just stood out to me for a month now:  " .... impart grace..."  (Ephes 4:29)

Oh how I would love to be one who imparts grace wherever I am ....