A Posture of Gratitude with Rebecca Grabill
Rebecca Grabill’s conversion started in the most unexpected way: a panic attack.
Since Rebecca also struggled with anxiety and agoraphobia, her husband suggested the Sacrament of Healing. Rebecca was unsure and decided to reach out to her parish.
Overcome with emotion, Rebecca wept as she recounted her story to her parish priest. Although he had never administered the Anointing of the Sick for severe anxiety in his 40 years of priesthood, he believed it was best.
Rebecca received a supernatural gift she never could have imagined.
“I was able for the first time to be able to truly love God…to experience a passionate love for God that was and is like a consuming fire.”
Rebecca's heart is filled with gratitude for the blessing of healing.
Listen to this Thanksgiving podcast and learn how you can have a posture of gratitude, too.
Learn more about Rebecca Grabill at www.rebeccagrabill.com.
Transcript:
Lindy Wynne (00:00)
Welcome to Mamas in Spirit, a podcast pointing you towards God in everything you are and everything you do. I'm Lindy Wynne and it's a blessing to be with you. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving. It is a joy and a gift to be together today yet to know that our hearts and our lives have been and will always be tied together eternally by our generous
abundant and loving God. And I am just delighted that we get to gather here today with Rebecca Grabill Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us.
Rebecca Grabill (00:37)
Thank you for having me. I am absolutely just delighted and overwhelmed and grateful to be here.
Lindy Wynne (00:45)
Well,
Rebecca and I got connected through Paraclete Press and I was telling her because she and her husband have written this book and I want to be careful about saying that first because we're not here to sell anything other than the free love of the Lord. We're here to share what we continue, hopefully all of us, to be blessed with. Like God's love is so abundant, so eternal, we can't even fathom it and there is more than enough
Rebecca Grabill (00:59)
Right, yes, exactly.
Lindy Wynne (01:12)
to go around not only our tables and our worlds, but beyond forever. And so, Rebecca is such a beautiful reflection of that generous love of the Lord and God's wondrous works. Because I told Rebecca, she also writes children's books. And I was very honest. said, well, I wanted to talk to you before we record, because sometimes I get connected with children's books authors. And then I talked about what Mamas in Spirit is. And they're like, no, thank you.
Rebecca Grabill (01:13)
Yeah
Yeah, well, I mean, it's a little, you know, intimidating to think, well, you're not talking about your book or children's writing or anything like that. You're telling a story like something personal from your life and just opening your heart to all of our closest friends that we've never met. Yeah, it's a little scary, but beautiful.
Lindy Wynne (01:58)
Yes, you I
love when other people feedback what mama's in spirit is. You open your heart to your closest friends that you've never met. And that is exactly what this is. This is a safe place for all of us. This is a safe place. And everyone gathered and you Rebecca, all of us are treasures. And that's what I tell my my children and my little who's only 10.
Rebecca Grabill (02:18)
Yeah.
Lindy Wynne (02:23)
But today we played a game of like drawing on each other's back and you have to like try to figure out what the letter is. And that's exactly what I told her, which I think is providential. I said, you are a treasure. So in that spirit of God being the ultimate treasure in our lives that changes and transforms and converts us in our hearts, and then also the treasure of gathering here today, whether you're listening and gathering on Thanksgiving or after in that gratitude.
Rebecca Grabill (02:35)
Hmm.
Lindy Wynne (02:53)
and that deep knowing, let us begin in prayer in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Dearest Lord, thank you. You are the miracle worker and you do wondrous works. You are the ultimate wondrous work. And so Lord, today, wherever we are, wherever we are gathering, if it's Thanksgiving or beyond, may our hearts be filled with gratitude for who you are. And like beautiful Rebecca said before we started, may we take time to pause and may this experience together be
Rebecca Grabill (03:14)
you
Lindy Wynne (03:22)
a time of reflection and deeper knowing and awareness of the wondrous works that you have done and continue to do in our lives. May we be still in you, Lord. May we be quiet in you, Lord. May we take moments and just even still ourselves in the busyness to know that you are stillness itself and you will remind us even in a moment of your goodness. In your name we pray, amen.
In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. So Rebecca, as we begin, it's always the funny question that I ask and I love people's responses so often when I'm like, let us start at the beginning of your story. We're speaking of one probably particular story because God is so abundant. have many hopefully not only conversions but reversion. So will you please start at the beginning of this story?
Rebecca Grabill (04:17)
Okay, so this story is it's one of gratitude and honestly that gratitude began like it's so easy to forget. It's so easy to forget the amazing things God has done for us in the past. And so first off, I'm really grateful to have this opportunity to pause and remember and to reflect on this story. So
I'm gonna start off by saying I have only been Catholic for almost two years. So it'll be two years in January. And it would be really easy to think that the story of why I became Catholic would be my conversion story, right? And it is, it's a good story. It's worth telling. There's a lot to it because our whole family, husband and all six of our kids came into the church together.
that it's not the story that needs to be told today. The truest and fullest story of gratitude and conversion involves what has happened since becoming Catholic. And truly this story, might surprise you, it's a good story, that it started out with a panic attack. And so when we were doing our preparation to come into the church, when we were doing our RCIA,
we were meeting with our parish priests, with our nun senior, and our process was a little different. A lot of parishes, you do classes and that wasn't the case with us. There was no class. We just, we sat down with one senior in his office and we talked about theology and we talked about Catholic culture and we talked about life. And my husband has a PhD in theology and that was my undergrad degree as well. So this, it just made sense for us to do it this way. And those conversations were so
joyful. They were such a gift and getting to know Monsignor was such a gift. And so when it came time for first reconciliation, which, you know, when you're doing it as an adult and that as an eight year old, it's like a very different experience, I think. So, you know, I knew it would be a little bit awkward and that I figured it would be like our meetings. And it was.
It was, we sat down and we talked and it was a conversation and everything seemed to go fine, except the moment I got in the car, something fell off and I couldn't silence my thoughts. My fears were just on overdrive and they were circling and circling. And I knew I would have some anxiety because in 2009, I was diagnosed with agoraphobia.
and panic disorder, which that's its own separate story. And it was a very accurate diagnosis stemming from a really complicated and painful early life. And I had been working on those issues for a very long time, more than a decade in counseling. So I knew I would have some anxiety, but I went home. I still felt kind of off. I tried to talk with my husband a little bit about it. He's like, it was fine.
And in the middle of the night, I woke up and I had a panic attack. I mean, worse than I had had in many, many, many years. The tools that I had learned that had gotten a little rusty because I hadn't needed them in a while, they weren't working. Like, it was really, really difficult. And for me, the after effects of that level of panic attack are
devastating. Like I will be trapped in this cycle of spiraling thoughts that get very dark very fast. Like I'm at the bottom of a well trying to claw the slick sides with my fingernails or, you know, like I've had 30 cups of coffee and I'm trapped in this room full of screaming toddlers and then some of them start throwing up. It's like that level of confusion and chaos and overwhelm. That's just, you can't even think.
And I was desperate. So I called Monsignor, which is kind of out of my nature. Like I don't pick up the phone and just call my parish priest out of the blue very often. I don't think I ever had. And I explained the situation a little bit over the phone and we set up an appointment. And then I had a couple of days to wait for that. And my husband suggested that I ask him for the sacrament of healing. And I was like,
No, not going to do that. Are you kidding me? But I promised him that when I went in, I would mention it because really at that point I was willing to do anything. I mean, I was at the end of what I could manage and I was even willing when the appointment time came to trudge through Michigan snow and sit down in my office and sob out my story.
about my history of abuse at the hands of my father, his admission of it, my years fighting to be the wife and the mother that I needed to be despite the fear that those first 10 or so years of my life had imprinted on my soul. I told my husband had suggested healing, I just, felt like I had botched my confession and maybe I just needed to do it over. And I truly expected him to agree with me.
Okay, I had Googled it. and Google, know, Google had these ideas. This is what I needed. But Monsignor didn't agree with me. He agreed with my husband, despite the fact that he said in more than 40 years of ministry, he had never given the sacrament of healing to someone for this reason. And that people didn't ask for the sacrament all that often.
And so there he was in his office and I received the sacrament of healing. And this is kind of funny at the end, he says, well, do you want to close in prayer? And I'm like, yeah, okay, we're done now. So, you know, I closed my eyes and wait for him to close in prayer and he doesn't say anything. And it's silent. And then I realized, he wanted, he wanted me to close in prayer. And so I kind of look up and he looks at me and nods like,
Yeah, okay, cool. And it was amazing. I just started talking to God. And here I am talking to God with Christ representative right there in the room. And I could almost hear the Holy Spirit, you know, rushing through the room. was, it was beautiful and amazing and a gift.
Truly. And so I left. And what I wanted God to do was pretty obvious. I I wanted God to heal my fear. I wanted this anxiety that had been an unhappy companion for most of my life. I wanted freedom from it. And, you know, I knew not to expect an immediate healing or response or anything. And I felt...
a little bit better, felt some relief from the intensity of it. The fear was still there. Yet I kind of I felt like something had changed. I just I didn't know what. So I went home and I related the whole event to my husband, Stephen, you know, with tears, with gratitude. And, you know, I did, I felt relief. And oddly, surprisingly, I longed
for a closeness with Steven like I hadn't longed for really ever. And I made a startling realization. So I need to back up a little bit and say, I had another soul wound beyond the panic, beyond the anxiety. And this was another wound from these early life experiences. And we all have soul wounds.
and they can come from all sorts of different places. And some of these wounds are really deep. Some of them superficial. This wound in particular impacted my marriage and impacted it negatively and have the entire 25 plus years that we have been married. It involves my sexuality, my ability to be fully present when intimate with my spouse, the way God intended.
it wasn't what it should have been. Because of my particular soul wound, I had to kind of go elsewhere in my mind. couldn't be present. Psychology speak would call it dissociation. Basically, I mentally wasn't there. I couldn't be ever for 25 years. And I had had this on my to do list to work on in counseling. I'd even started talking to my counselor about
like, ⁓ I should work on this, you know, a bunch of times. But the other things, the agoraphobia, the anxiety, the day-to-day survival with all the life throws at you, those things, you know, always took center stage. They were more pressing. And in a lot of ways, I had actually also given up this area of myself as lost. I kind of thought it was broken beyond repair.
And, you know, I really truly believed that I would never experience intimacy the way I was supposed to. And I had accepted that. It was, I really believed that there was no fixing this. Until that night.
Until that night, I discovered that I was healed, fully, completely healed. I don't even have words to express the before and after. That shadowy, fragmented place I had to go in my mind to be intimate or to carry out an approximation of it, that shadowy side alley of my soul was gone.
That split off place was gone. I was whole. I could experience oneness with my husband as God intended. And it wasn't a temporary thing. It's not like, when you have a fever and you take some medicine and the fever goes away for a while. And when it comes back, it wasn't like that. I was completely healed in an area of self, of my person and life that I had given up as completely lost. I had given up all hope.
And I can tell you almost two years later, that part is still healed. But interestingly, that thing that I had wanted to be healed remained. I still had the fear. I still had the anxiety. I had gone in wanting that thorn in my flesh plucked out and instead, God healed this part of me that I had given up as lost. Well, why? Well, there's...
Lots of theological reasons about the Holy Trinity, God's purpose for marriage, but for me, the healing did something more. It opened my heart to love for the first time in my life. Not only could I be present in my marriage the way I had always wanted to be, I was able for the first time ever to truly love God.
Not just think about loving Him, not kind of love in an abstract mental way, but experience a passion for Christ that was, that is like a consuming fire, like an ocean of love opened up in me. And truly I could keep going on the way that this has shown itself like forever, but here it is. This is my gratitude right here. It's the healing and this
Full body conversion of love.
Lindy Wynne (15:38)
Rebecca, first I just want to say speaking of love is that I've said before in many retreats in this mini retreat in a podcast that there's a point at which I fall in love with the guest. And I have to say, within a few minutes of you're sharing my internal thought was I love.
Rebecca Grabill (15:39)
Ha ha ha!
Lindy Wynne (16:03)
Rebecca, you are precious. You're precious. And that sharing is profound, is profound. And in some ways, I don't want to say very much because sometimes I think Natalie Hanneman said something about like words are cheap or something. And here you are an author and she is too. But like there are some things that words can't touch. And I feel like
Rebecca Grabill (16:26)
Hmm.
Lindy Wynne (16:28)
your sharing is so profound that words can't touch it. That being said, I do want to... This is a podcast. Yes, yes. Okay.
Rebecca Grabill (16:33)
We have to keep talking. Yeah, ⁓ exactly. We can hit pause and consider and then come back.
Lindy Wynne (16:46)
The story that came to me, there were really two stories from scripture that came to me when you were sharing. And more lightly, the woman at the well, when you talked about being in a well and almost like trying to claw out and there's this in the story of the woman at the well, she says, but the well is deep, like the well is so deep. And what I'm hearing from you yet the love of the Lord is deeper.
and that there is nothing, nothing that is so lost or so forgotten or so beyond anything that it is beyond the touch of the love and the healing of the Lord. And that's what you've experienced and you've expressed so beautifully. And
I know that you talked about your anxiety and agoraphobia and is agoraphobia the one where it's there's fear of like leaving your home?
Rebecca Grabill (17:37)
Yeah, every new experience taking, you know, seeing a road closed, like, you know, having to take a different route, going anyplace new, all the speaking events of being an author. Yeah.
Lindy Wynne (17:48)
Well, that kind of touches on your giftedness in the sense of how contemplative you seem to be and how reflective you seem to be. It all pours out because I can tell, and I imagine we can tell that you have really pondered with the Lord and you have really sat with the Lord and been with the Lord to be able to articulate and describe your internal experience in a way that
Rebecca Grabill (17:54)
Mm.
Mm.
Lindy Wynne (18:16)
it touches and points towards heaven so profoundly and so meaningfully. The other story that came to heart really profoundly was in that moment of reconciliation with the priest was the story of the woman who reaches out to touch the hem of Christ's garment. It was like that reaching out that you went to reconciliation
Rebecca Grabill (18:22)
Thank you.
you
Lindy Wynne (18:43)
And then you talked about the profundity of the priest being there as Christ in a sense, then in the image of Christ in a sense, in the love and reflection of Christ's love and mercy in that experience and reconciliation. Can you speak to that more?
Rebecca Grabill (18:52)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I have found, okay, well, from that point, I had a lot to work through with reconciliation. Because of my history, I had a phobia of it. And, you know, I'd never heard the word scrupulosity before, but that was something that I was struggling with at the same time. And so this phobia plus scrupulosity plus, you know, the anxiety that was heightened.
from that panic attack, because it took a while for that to kind of ease down a little bit. But I have come to love the sacrament of reconciliation. mean, I think it's so easy for people who've been doing it their whole life to see it as you just go through and you check off your list. It's just something else that you do. But the power to change
your soul to give you strength is just amazing. It can change your heart. Like I went in once with, you know, we've talked before this, but so, you know, that my youngest has special needs and his special needs are beautiful and challenging and sometimes embarrassing and
and sometimes very disruptive to just life and to sleep and all these things. So in the evening, as I'm getting ready for bed, I'll listen to the evening prayer. And very often in there, there's the passage about, you know, children are a blessing from the Lord. You know, blessed is the man who fills his quiver with these arrows. And I would feel in my heart like, I don't.
feel very blessed by this. And so I knew that was not the right attitude of my heart. So I brought that to reconciliation and got changed it. You know, that's the thing. If you lay something on your heart that you know isn't right, that you don't want to have that there and you're just giving it to God and saying, I don't want this.
way of thinking that's not true. know, change, change it. He didn't change my son, he changed me. So, yeah.
Lindy Wynne (21:12)
love that he didn't change my son he changed me and isn't that so much in my own experience too at the heart of healing it's not trying to fix or change somebody else to my mental design but it's a allowing God opening my heart so that Lord can change me and the word that's coming to heart for me is a word that I've really
Rebecca Grabill (21:22)
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
Lindy Wynne (21:38)
heard mostly in Mamas in Spirit and recently somewhere else, but I don't remember well, and it's the word posture. And it causes me to question and ask myself, what is the posture of my heart? And what is the posture of my heart before God and others? And I think that's why I feel so drawn to you, Rebecca, is the posture of your heart is humble.
Rebecca Grabill (21:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Lindy Wynne (22:00)
And
I hear humility preached about in so many different ways or talked about in so many different ways, but it is not the act of the mind. It's the posture of the heart. is.
Rebecca Grabill (22:11)
Well,
I appreciate that there are moments when I don't feel very humble. that word posture, to me, it goes along with what you said a moment ago about the story of the woman touching Christ's garment. She couldn't do that. She couldn't touch the tassels on his robe from standing next to him. She had to be on the ground. She had to be creeping.
forward, reaching out in a posture of complete submission. And it brings to mind for me a story that kept coming up throughout a lot of the past few years of when Christ would do healings, like the healing of the leper, for example. Christ reached out in one of the stories and touched the leper.
You know, the leper had to have been bowed down, but he had to be willing to be touched. And I realized that so many times I tell, I tell Jesus, you can't touch me. You are going to catch what I got. You know, you're going to, I'm too, I'm too broken. I'm too far gone. Don't, don't touch me.
And yet that's what he wants to do. He wants to reach out. There's an element of us needing to reach out to touch, but we also have to allow ourselves to be touched. And sometimes that's terrifying because of the fear that maybe he will recoil. if Jesus reached out to touch the leper and was like, ew, I'm unclean now. I mean, of course that's not what happened.
But I think it's natural in our hearts to have that fear that whatever we've done, whatever parts of ourselves that we dislike, it's just not, it's beyond what God can do. And it's not, it's not.
Lindy Wynne (24:02)
Yes, there is nothing that God cannot do. And that is so much at the heart of your story and your testimony. And I love what you shared about it's the hemorrhaging woman.
She'd been hemorrhaging for so many years. I don't even remember how many years right now that she was hemorrhaging. 12 years. She was hemorrhaging for so many years. Hurting, suffering, struggling. And you're right. I never thought about that, about her posture. And I think that is what we can ask ourselves. What is my posture today? What is my posture towards you today, Lord?
Rebecca Grabill (24:16)
⁓ yes.
I 12, 11 and 12.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lindy Wynne (24:40)
What is my posture towards healing or the ability for God to heal me? What is the posture towards my understanding of my belovedness by God and that God wants to love me and heal me and be with me and that God will never reject me?
There's nothing, there's no way that I could be so lost or so broken or so sinful or so wounded or anything else that God wouldn't want and most deeply desire to heal me and to share his love with me.
Rebecca Grabill (25:12)
Yeah, exactly. Well, and are we willing to accept healing in areas that we didn't ask for? Like, we have an idea of what we want God to heal? And are we willing to be grateful for God's timeline in healing? Like, there were moments with my healing where I was like,
I'm grateful, but I'm so anxious and I'm having such a hard time with all this other stuff. really, couldn't you have just healed the other thing? I mean, I was okay with, you know, I had accepted that this was broken and I'm really glad that you fixed it, but I still have to deal with this, you know, internal landscape of fear. And that's where you're.
the stillness and the quiet and then thinking of stories like Joseph, you know, getting sold by his brothers into slavery. It's almost like the Lord is saying, daughter, I'm leaving you with this because it turns your attention to me. I have a purpose. I will heal you. I will in my time, but right now.
You need this for reasons you don't understand and are you going to trust me?
And, that's terrifying and profound. And do we trust God enough to take us through awful things and be grateful for it while we're in it? Like, can we have joy in our suffering? Everybody talks about these gratitude lists, you know, it's very popular, the gratitude journals and write down all your blessings. And yes, that's
Wonderful. And it's powerful. And it can change your outlook for a whole day if you do that in the morning. But who writes down, all my kids have the stomach flu in their gratitude journal. Who writes down, you know, my husband and I had a fight last night. Who writes down like.
I've got this terrible weight on my shoulders and I don't know how to lift it and I just feel so alone. It's not natural for us to be grateful to those things, but that's part of where the Christian life, we're not called to the natural, we're called to the supernatural. And that's where, you know, the sacraments, bringing some of that
those things to confession, bringing those things when you, when I walk up to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, I am bringing all of my brokenness with me because we all, that all, that whole self system, you know, we all need Jesus. The angry part that was just, you know, annoyed with my child for throwing his boot three rows ahead of him and
The part that's still remembering the harsh words from my spouse, the part that, you know, has got the to-do list running, the part that's worried about things, the part that's afraid.
Jesus needs to come into all of that for that supernatural healing. I mean, Eucharist means Thanksgiving. I mean, that's what the word means, right? So when we receive Jesus, we're receiving him into our burdens, into our sufferings, into our pain, into our agony. And I mean, it's his agony right there that we're receiving too. And that's just...
I know, that's beautiful to me. And I wish it was at the front of my mind all the time instead of having to be brought to the front of my mind, you know?
Lindy Wynne (28:31)
You are captivating, Rebecca. I think it's because you sit at the feet of Jesus in your life. Your heart sits at the foot of Christ's heart, Christ's sacred heart in your life. Because I'm here thinking I could sit at her feet and just listen to her. Honestly, my next question is, what else do you want to share, Rebecca?
Rebecca Grabill (28:33)
Stop it!
I don't know.
Lindy Wynne (28:55)
What else is on your heart? Just share with us.
Rebecca Grabill (28:57)
⁓
my goodness.
What else is on my heart? What else is on my heart is that.
Jesus wants to touch us. He wants to love me. I can't tell you how much I struggled and still struggle to really believe because of my soul wound, to really believe that God loves me.
there are still times when I question that. And something that spoke to me recently at a retreat that I was volunteering at, it was my daughter's retreat, the sisters were sharing in their sweet accents and they were talking about how even these parts of ourselves that we don't like, know, the grumpy, cranky, know, slamming the cupboard door parts, whatever.
that God finds those endearing. He doesn't want us to sin, obviously, but the grumpy parts, the depressed parts, the melancholic parts, like I can be very melancholic sometimes. God finds those endearing. And what would it be like to just sit in God's presence, to sit in front of Jesus and ask him,
do you really see me? And to just absorb that. I mean, I think it would be an outpouring of love, just a bucket full of love dumped right on us. yeah, that's
The thing that I would encourage everybody to do, to just sit with Jesus and say, how do you see me? And let him love you, let him touch you.
Lindy Wynne (30:31)
Yes, Rebecca, that is so beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that. this memory is coming back for me. So I sing and I don't usually share that. feel kind of shy about it, but I can't hear at my church and I love to sing. To be honest, it's my favorite hobby. Like I spend most of my time singing in my house, like warming up or practicing or whatever. And to me, it's like a touch of heaven. It's like a reach of the heart.
towards heaven. just love it so much. And actually today, I sing a little song before I came over here as prayer in my little chapel. I have a little shisha chapel. And I sing in there by myself with my big dog. And it was so funny because I sing it. And then I turned around at the same time my dog did to leave. It was like we were there praying together. I was saying St. Francis would love it that my dogs know to look for me in my chapel.
Rebecca Grabill (31:07)
Yes, awesome.
yes.
Lindy Wynne (31:22)
So I cantered at church and we were preparing with some of the other people in choir and one of the women in choir is she's very seasoned and she can read music so well and she's very, very good. She's a very strong canter. yet it was my turn to canter with this young girl, which is the first time I've ever been paired with a child. And that's part of the story. And so...
When we were preparing and we're there with a pianist and sometimes it's different pianists and so we're all kind of like practicing before mass and getting prepared to go. And there was one gospel acclamation that changes, the words change every time for every mass. And this particular one, there were so many words within the musical bars. It was a lot. And I turned to the choir and I said, pray for me.
Rebecca Grabill (32:13)
Yes.
Ha!
Lindy Wynne (32:17)
Please just pray for me. And I can't remember exactly what she said, but she looked at me in the sweetest way and the most gentle voice and she said, whatever you do, I know that God will look at you so endearingly. Like so endeared. Like she basically touched on this. Like you talked about that bucket, you know, the bucket just being washed over God's love for us.
Rebecca Grabill (32:35)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lindy Wynne (32:43)
God will just be so endeared, his sweet little daughter singing for him. And hilarious in the mass, everyone. Before I would have looked at all of my errors in more of like a perfectionistic way and more like a tutorial, like how can I get to 100 % in this and not make any mistakes? Now I enter mass knowing that I will likely make errors, but in a more enchanted way, like a
Rebecca Grabill (32:47)
Yes.
yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Lindy Wynne (33:10)
⁓ it is what it is. And like, I do all the preparation. I do all my homework. It's not that I don't do those things I do. It's just, I am where I am. I am who I am. And it's so literally in that mass, there were a few different things that happened that I can chuckle at now, like that are funny. Like I'm standing with the 12, I think she's 12 year old girl trying to help and encourage her.
And we do the opening song and then I go to step down and we're doing remodeling in our parish and there was, there was, it was different and I almost fell and I just laughed and she laughed and it was just funny. And then I lost my place in the one verse of the Psalm that I've never sang the Psalm with somebody else. And I lost my place because I was so busy trying to move the microphone to her and make sure she was being heard and whatever that.
Rebecca Grabill (33:40)
no.
no.
Mm-hmm.
Lindy Wynne (34:00)
She then, her little sweet little 12 year old girl hand was like, no, you're singing the wrong part. And she pointed to the right part that we're supposed to be singing together. And then I'm saying to her afterwards, I'm so sorry, but there is nothing, I can't go backwards. All I can say to this darling 12 year old is will you please forgive me? I'm so sorry. And then I lost my place another time where I just, thought we were doing something different and we're remodeling so I couldn't hear the choir. It's like, God is so endeared.
Rebecca Grabill (34:09)
Yes.
haha
no.
Lindy Wynne (34:29)
D. God is just endeared. Like here we are, His daughters that are human, who He loves so profoundly. And to me, the way my mind is in that now, Rebecca, the way I perceive that, I've received the grace of healing. The way I perceive everything I do is so different now. All praise and glory be to God. And so I share that story just...
Rebecca Grabill (34:45)
Yes.
Amen. ⁓
Lindy Wynne (34:55)
because I'm reminded of that in this moment. And because I think that in Thanksgiving, in this time of Thanksgiving, to look at the wonderful works of the Lord, the healing and the healing in anticipation of the healing that is to come when hopefully by his grace, we come with a posture like the hemorrhaging woman, like I hear from you, Rebecca, you're such a beautiful example of this, of that.
that humble approach, whether it be on our knees, on our hands, on our face, flat face, however it feels, so that we can receive that healing and holy touch of the Lord.
Rebecca Grabill (35:32)
Absolutely. Amen. Amen to that. Yes.
Lindy Wynne (35:36)
Praise God. Praise God.
So everyone, we want to wish you a happy, happy Thanksgiving and season of Thanksgiving and life time of Thanksgiving. May we gather at the table. May we know that every human being belongs at the table and may we sit at the feet of Christ to allow for that supernatural like Rebecca said, not the natural.
Rebecca Grabill (35:49)
us.
Lindy Wynne (36:02)
but that supernatural and divine infilling just so that we can be present as Christ is present to us and that we can be grateful for Emmanuel, God with us. So Rebecca, thank you so much and how can we all get connected with lovely you?
Rebecca Grabill (36:19)
Okay, so it didn't even come up, but I am a writer and I have two recent releases. One is One Star Three Kings. It's a picture book about Epiphany and the journey of the Magi. And then the other is The Joy of Advent, which I co-authored with my husband. And it is a family guide for Advent and Epiphany. And if you go to joyofadvent.com, you can sign up.
for a digital advent calendar that has, it goes along with the book, but it can be used separately. It has a meditation, gorgeous artwork and beautiful carols and just inspiring music for every day of Advent and every day of the 12 days of Christmas because Christmas is not one day. So we need to keep that going.
So that is truly the best way to get in touch with me, but people are also free to email me. have rebeccagrable.com is my kind of personal author site and I can be reached through that too. Yeah, so.
Lindy Wynne (37:23)
Wonderful. Can you lift back up the joy of Advent for those of us on YouTube and watching video? Yes. Those are beautiful. She's holding up both of them and those are so beautiful. And I've never been so organized in my life by the grace of God. I am sharing with you the joy of Advent before we enter Advent because Advent starts this Sunday.
Rebecca Grabill (37:29)
Yes.
Yeah.
Lindy Wynne (37:45)
That's
by the grace of God. We all have strengths and weaknesses. So this is like I'm thankful to the Lord. This is like a miracle for me because. So as you enter Advent, please go look at that resource and pray and discern if God is calling you to that resource for this time of Advent and also the children's book for your children. That is one of my favorite stories in scripture and one of my favorite quotes in scripture is three words, behold the star.
Rebecca Grabill (37:51)
Amen.
Mm.
Behold
the star. Yeah, no, truly I sat in the coffee shop writing that and I would sit there each day and just cry, cry because I feel like that's the story was so rich and so meaningful and so much depth to it that it was a joy to write. Yeah.
Lindy Wynne (38:14)
Behold the star.
That's so wonderful. Praise God. Well, thank you for that, Rebecca.
And will you please close us in prayer?
Rebecca Grabill (38:33)
Yes, I absolutely will. And as we thank God together for the gifts that he has given us, let us also remember that we ourselves can be a gift to God. So in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Adonai, ⁓ ruler of Israel, you who guide Joseph like a flock. Emmanuel, Sapiensia, we give ourselves to you. We trust you wholly. You are wiser than we are, more loving to us than we are to ourselves. Fulfill your high purposes in us, whatever they be. Work in and through us. We are born to serve you.
to be yours, to be your instruments. Let us be your blind instruments. We ask not to see, we ask not to know, we ask simply to be used. And we thank you so much, Lord, for your grace, for your gifts, and for your ocean of love that washes in us and through us and through us out into the rest of the world as we are.
carry you into the world. Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
Lindy Wynne (39:48)
Amen. That beautiful prayer shows your beautiful heart, Rebecca. Thank you so much for being with us.
Rebecca Grabill (39:53)
You are so
welcome. it was from St. The part of it was from St. John Henry Newman. So.
Lindy Wynne (39:59)
Amazing.
So amazing. Thank you. And everyone, thank you. Thank you for being part of this beautiful community. Mamas in spirit. You are a treasure. Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your day. Enjoy this season whenever you're listening and may our hearts be filled with gratitude for the good works of the Lord. Can't wait to be together again next time.
Rebecca Grabill (40:02)
Yes.
Lindy Wynne (40:22)
This is Lindy Wynne with Mamas in Spirit. May God bless you and yours always.