Magnum Opus

If someone were to ask me today what is your greatest life's work?

I would answer with a heart full of humility and love and gratitude and thanksgiving.

And I would show you a picture of the most beautiful gift of grace on earth.

It is my first born gift. My darling Macey Girl.

The one whom I've loved and raised and adored and been blessed by for twenty two years.


Twenty two years ago on this very day.

The one whom the Lord entrusted me with at the tender age of eighteen years old.

We all know that at eighteen years old, there is still much knowledge to gain.

But He entrusted me anyway.....grace made manifest.

When I think back about how scared to death I was, but at how the Lord, whom I did not know,
filled me with a courage that was not from this world, to push through the truckloads of adversity, it is absolutely overwhelming to me.....
How we walked through and managed and struggled and still somehow by His grace, pushed through...

The pointing of the finger by many.

The rejection.

The judgment.

The heartbreak.

The loneliness.

The abandonment of every, single, high school friend, save one.


It's easy to create when everyone loves you.

To create a masterpiece when everyone is for you.

To create something beautiful when everyone is cheering you on.

 It is about nearly impossible to create anything when everyone is against you.

To grow a beautiful child in heartbreaking conditions...."impossible" they told me.

"Those two will never make it", they said behind my back. 

She is just "white trash", they said.

Having a child out of wedlock is a sin, you know.

You will end up just being "a statistic". The two of you "don't have a chance", they said.


The judgment alone we walked through day after day after day, in the middle of the bible belt, with a church on every corner, mind you, was enough to send one into an early grave.

And there were days that I didn't want to stand any more. I couldn't stand any more.

And then here she would come, with great, big, chocolate, brown eyes and the sweetest disposition on earth, and I would melt into a puddle and think to myself , and sometimes I was really brave and would even say it out loud....."Lord, if you really do exist, please Lord, please help us get through this.

"This" was just another Wednesday, when the car didn't start and the lights were cut off, again.

And if I was late to work one more time, I was going to lose my job. And if I didn't pay the day care all the money I owed them, they were not going to allow my baby girl to remain enrolled there.

And the man, whom I thought was going to be my future husband one day, at the time, decided to raise his hand again, sending me right into the emergency room where they proceeded to staple the crown of my head back together.

The very crown of my head, split right in two.

The pieces turned into pieces that become more pieces.

When your heart is in pieces and your life is in pieces and your trust has been broken....into pieces.

It is a divine platform for the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the One who is the greatest creator ever known, the ultimate Magnum Opus.....God Almighty, to step right in and take
every, single piece of our life and orchestrate it all together in such a way.....

That twenty two years later, on the very day it all began...

You could stand boldly, with confidence in Him, with a knowing that this, the very thing and circumstance and situation every one said would never be.

This is your Magnum Opus. Your greatest life's work. Your masterpiece.

The very thing you thought was going to be the end of you, because you didn't know or understand
the magnitude of it all.

Macey Mclain.

You are my Magnum Opus. My greatest life's work, by His grace alone.

You are the gift that came to me twenty two years ago, today, at 2:52 p.m. and the only child I've ever given birth to who smiled at me the second they placed you in my arms.

You are the reason I am standing here today. The gift that came to hold me together, when I should have been holding you together.

Each day that goes by I am humbled that you choose me.
That still, after all these years and after many mistakes, you choose a relationship with your very, young mom who is still having babies and raising babies and caring for babies. While all the other Moms are able to show up at college with car loads of surprises and dinners and tickets and such.
And your Mom is wrangling five children somewhere along the Pampers aisle at Target.

What you may not know or understand or be able to comprehend, is that once God formed you, and perfectly created you, and entrusted you into my arms....

It ruined me forever.

I knew from that very moment, that Motherhood, would be my calling.

That Motherhood would be my gift.

That Motherhood, and newborn babies and toddlers and sweet, bouncing little ones, would be the thing that would cause me to go weak in the knees and I would never be able to return to an upright position again.

You were the one whom God chose to use to teach me so many things.....

You were the one who would become the gift of grace made manifest in my own life.


Thank you baby girl.

I am so incredibly proud of you.

For all that you are. For all that you have become.

For all of the incredible, wonderful, amazing gifts and talents you walk in every day.

For that Pastor's heart you were blessed with from day one.

For the radiant beauty that shines from within you.

I love you and adore you more than you will every know.

Happy Birthday baby girl...... the very best is yet to come.

You are living proof of that.

On my knees with thanksgiving today and every day,

Mama Dukes
Romans 8:18

"Are you awake, Charlotte?" he said softly.  "Yes," came the answer.

"What is that nifty little thing?


"Did you make it?" "I did indeed," replied Charlotte in a weak voice.

"Is it a plaything?" "Plaything?" I should say not. It is my egg sac, my magnum opus.

"I don't know what a magnum opus is," said Wilbur.

That's Latin," explained Charlotte. "It means 'great work.'


This egg sac is my great work- the finest thing I have ever made.



~Charlotte's Web