Amazing Grace

I went to watch an opera yesterday with Katie. It was performed by Opera North at the Grand Theatre (a lovely old theatre tucked away in a dodgy alley) and we only paid £5 to see it because of the student rates for Opera North perfomances! We were sitting right in the middle of the theatre and could even see the orchestra pit! It was marvellous marvellous marvellous and Katie's cherry drops were marvellous and Ninetta's voice was indescribable.

It was called "The Thieving Magpie", and was about a woman sentenced to death for stealing when the culprit was actually a magpie. There were a couple of funny lines, one about wine: "Even the milk from his mother's nipple can't compare" - repeated and tossed around by various singers vibrato, tremolo and goodness knows what else - and another one, when Ninetta was trying to ward off a suitor - "I hate you, I abhor you, you disgust me!" - only when sung it sounded more like "Oooiiiiiii hate yoooooooooou, I abhorrrrrrr yoooooouuuuuu, yoooooooouuu disGUST me!"; they made Katie and I glance sideways at each other and smile.

Yesterday, though, I felt as though I'd wasted alot of time. After I got back I tried to get some journals out from the library but the maze of shelves lost me entirely and I was half-afraid, it being close to midnight, that the shelves would suddenly close and smash me like a little invertebrate in between. I couldn't find what I was looking for so I went home and did my laundry until 3 in the morning, while watching Shakespeare in Love, so I went to sleep with my head all muggy and unclear and woke up feeling horrible and unfocussed at 9 today.

I felt horrible all the way to uni, and then went in to the Maths department to get my results (Biology ones haven't come out yet). As I walked down towards the room of doom, I remembered that painful week of exams, that one night where I'd felt I'd been in the valley of the shadow of death, how I hadn't eaten anything until my exam ended at 5 on two days, how after one particular exam I'd had the sinking feeling that I would fail, how the night before that exam I'd hardly slept and cried every half an hour and had felt so alone. How I'd walked those days entirely in God's strength, because if I'd relied on my own strength I would have collapsed long ago. How it had been a very dark week for me.

Opened the envelope expecting to see barely passing marks, but instead I saw impossibly good marks and the reality sank in that I'd done well. The past year had been full of downs and my results had suffered, but now, for the first time, I was doing well again. And for the module I hadn't understood and thought I'd fail, I'd passed with a good mark. Thinking back, I knew that I hadn't written anything of myself worth getting such marks for! I remember thinking after that paper that I'd written a load of rubbish. But He who had turned the water into wine had done it again. How, I didn't know, but I knew that He had done it.

As I walked up the stairs I was so overwhelmed with a sense of God's grace. I hadn't studied enough, I'd tried to predict which questions would come out, I'd studied selectively, I hadn't done my tutorials consistently, I hadn't even understood what I was studying at times, I didn't deserve to do well. But He had pulled me through. He had given me strength, and now His grace overwhelmed me with my results. Was blinking hard and sniffling as I walked blindly to my next lecture... His grace was so real, and so good.

These few days I've realised how very weak I am of myself. But I am glad, and I will boast of my weaknesses, for where I am weak, there He is strong, and there is His grace sufficient for me.

One day, if I ever have a daughter, I think I might just name her Grace