Over the past few weeks I’ve felt the nudge to write something. What? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have anything to say, nothing new to share. I couldn’t imagine how that emptiness within me was supposed to produce anything, certainly nothing of value.
Then one phrase came to me:
“Perfectly tailored grace.”
My first thought was that these may be among the most beautifully profound, yet disarmingly simple, words ever strung together.
Perfectly tailored grace changed my life.
Close your eyes and picture a man wearing a tailored suit. You immediately recognize it's tailored because it fits him with remarkable precision. Every seam, every measurement, every detail has been crafted specifically for him. The garment is bespoke, highly personalized and made exclusively to fit him.
“Just as each of you has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of the varied grace of God.” 1 Peter 4:10
Spiritual gifts are a living expression of God’s grace. When we use the gifts He has entrusted to us to serve others, His glory becomes visible, tangible, in the world.
Like that bespoke suit, God’s grace is never generic. Through the unique gifts He has given each believer, His grace meets people precisely where they are, reaching them in their specific circumstance, providing exactly what they need at exactly the moment they need it.
His grace is perfectly tailored.
Distinctly personal.
Exclusively designed to fit the need.
For the first time in the forty years I had lived, on Sunday, February 17, 2019, I stepped forward at the end of a church gathering and asked for prayer.
I was nervous because I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. How much backstory does this person need in order to pray the “right” prayer?
But I did it.
I walked up to a woman who stood with a gentle spirit and quiet strength and began telling her my story.
I had been afraid for months. The truth is, I had been afraid for years. But the moment had come. I was about to poke the proverbial bear.
My ex-husband was a violent, vindictive man who had abused me for eleven years, culminating in an attempt to take my life. He had been sent to prison, but before that he vowed to kill me if I ever allowed another man to live in my house and raise “his” son.
I believed him.
I hadn’t seen him since 2014, but I still believed him.
By the day I stepped forward for prayer, I had been remarried for nearly three years. My husband is the kindest, most loving, thoughtful, patient, and wonderful man I have ever known. My life had become more beautiful than I could have imagined. I didn’t want my past to destroy the peace of my present.
But my prayer that morning came from a place of desperation because I was about to rock the peaceful boat that had become my life.
For years, my fifteen-year-old son had been asking me to change his last name from his father’s to my maiden name; the name I had reclaimed after my divorce.
He hadn’t seen his father in more than five years. Whenever someone called him by his legal last name, he would break down in tears. The Christian school he had attended for eleven years graciously allowed him to use my maiden name, but now high school was approaching, and we knew he would have to use his legal name.
“Please, Mom,” he would say. “Let me change my name.”
His father had voluntarily surrendered legal and physical custody, but not his parental rights. That meant legally changing my son’s name required notifying his father.
Since his release from prison, he had left us alone. We hadn’t seen or heard from him in years.
My goal was to keep it that way.
I told my son he was too young to make such a significant decision. Honestly, I wasn’t sure he understood the gravity of changing his name.
That was until one of my “no’s” was met with these words, “Mom, God changes people’s names in the Bible all the time when He changes their lives.”
He was right.
Throughout Scripture, a name often represented more than an identity. It represented character, calling, and sometimes the direction of a person’s life.
He told me that he didn’t want to carry the name of a man who abuses women and abandons his children. He wanted to carry forward the name of my father, my family; a name that carries honor, honesty and dignity.
How could I argue with that? So the very next Sunday, I walked forward and asked this woman to pray for the safety of my son, my family, and me. Changing my son’s last name would infuriate his father, and I believed without question that he would come for me.
But God felt so distant, uncharacteristically quiet during my time with Him. My past was filled with moments when His hand had unmistakably moved on our behalf, answering my prayers in undeniable ways. So why did He seem silent now, when I needed Him most?
The following morning, I signed the paperwork petitioning the court to change my son’s name. In doing so, I would also have to notify his father. I was waking a sleeping Goliath.
After leaving my lawyer’s office, I sat in my car, filled with uncertainty, crying, and called my best friend.
As we talked, she said, “Before you pick up your son from school, stop by my house. I have a package for you.”
A package?
For me?
Mailed to her house?
When I arrived at her house, I opened the package. Inside was a handmade prayer shawl and a card from a group of women, perfect strangers, from a church in South Carolina that I had never heard of.
As I read their note, tears filled my eyes.
They explained that while they gathered each week to knit the prayer shawl, they had faithfully prayed for my son and me. Every stitch had been woven with prayer.
When the shawl was finished, it was taken to their next communion service where each member of the congregation laid a hand on it and prayed over us. Then, before the service ended, their pastor prayed over it one final time before it was mailed.
Perfect strangers, hundreds of miles away showed me the glory and perfect love of our Abba.
I am sure that they had no idea that package would be in my hands the day I stepped out in faith, trusting the Father that had been so faithful time after time. But God knew.
His providence had already been set in motion before I had even asked for prayer. Before fear ever reached my doorstep, grace had already been measured, stitched, prayed over, and sent ahead.
That is what perfectly tailored grace looks like!
Have you ever mistaken God’s silence for His absence?
Looking back, can you see ways God was already at work before you realized you needed Him?
Who has been an unexpected expression of God’s grace in your life?
How might God want to use your unique gifts to become “perfectly tailored grace” for someone else this week?
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