In “Grace Where You Are,” Emily Belle Freeman uses beloved scriptural accounts and personal experiences to share her understanding of how Jesus will meet you where you are, as you are, to offer divine grace to heal your wounds and elevate your soul. Below is an excerpt from the book where she shares how grace can lead us home.
Sometimes the only way home when you are lost is for someone to come take your hand and lead you there. Just like the boy who wandered off in the West Desert near Delta, Utah, when he was three years old. He tried to find his way back, tried calling out the names of his grandpa, his dad, and his brothers, tried to remember where everyone had been. The day was the hottest on record for that time of the year, but the night would bring strong south winds signaling the approach of a late spring storm. Snow was forecast, the temperature was dropping, and the conditions were terrible for a three-year-old wandering through the wilderness alone. He didn’t know about staying warm, about finding shelter, about the need for water. He just knew he was all tired out. So, that night after walking and walking as far as he could go, the tiny boy with his blistered sunburn sad down next to a rock to wait.
They called in the search and rescue, they called in the army, they called in every friend and family member they knew. By nightfall over five hundred rescuers were combing in the desert in search of the three-year-old boy, but he was not found that night. It was hours and hours later, after the night had ended and morning had come, after prayers had been cried out, and rescuers had searched the terrain, after airplane and K-9 teams and search and rescue had looked for almost thirty-six hours, when one man showed up on the scene.
He had come home late from work that day and missed the ride with those who had left for the rescue hours before. He almost didn’t go. But, when he got home, his wife had packed the car with a sleeping bag, some water, and a flashlight, so he drove down to the West Desert alone. When he got to the command table everyone else was already out searching. Not knowing where to go, he knelt down to pray and then he started to walk. He hiked through the valley and up the dunes and started up the steep side of a mountain. After had walked for hours, his inclination told him this terrain was too rough for a three-year-old to navigate, the trail too steep. Reason told him that it was too far from the base camp, but the Spirit urged him on. Three other groups had gotten that far earlier in the day; they had been on that same trail, had struggled against the same terrain, had reached that exact same location, and all of them had turned back for home. But this man kept walking through the loose shale, up the steep path, and along the top of the mountain until he finally found the three-year-old boy waiting patiently next to the rock.
For a rescue. For a way back. He just wanted to go home.
That three-year-old boy just needed someone to meet him where he was, as he was, and then take him to the place he wasn’t capable of getting to on his own.
Aren’t we all waiting for a rescue? For a way back? Don’t we all want to go home?
Our Father knew the only way back for each of us from this mortal experience would require a Deliverer who was willing to come from heave to where we were, into the lost places, extending the enabling grace that would help us get back home. He sent His Son to preserve us, to help us, to hand us safely over. One who would hike up every mountain, who would walk through the roughest terrain, who wouldn’t give up or turn back until He found us. He knows we are waiting.
For a rescue. For a way back. For a Deliverer who is willing to bring us home.
Read more in “Grace Where You Are” by Emily Belle Freeman.
Featured Image | House of Maria
Aleah is a graduate of Southern Virginia University, where she studied English, Creative Writing, and Dance. She now works full time as a marketing and product manager, writer, and editor. She currently hosts the podcast “Single to the Glory” about singlehood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Aleah served a mission in California and loves baking, Lang Leav poetry, Gaynor Minden pointe shoes, and Bollywood movies.
