Grace
Grace.
We didn't talk about grace in the Mormon church when I was growing up. But the word has been rattling around in my head, banging pots and pans in my mind attic, trying to get my attention.
Grace is, I think, the gap between who you want to be and who you discover you actually are.
It's the gap between your potential and your visions and your plans, and the rough and sketchy road life drags you down.
It's the map plotting the difference between the person you thought your parent was, and who they really are.
It's the terrible equation to describe the blank wasteland between who you wish you could be for your kids, and the paltry whatever's on hand you can provide. Crumbles, handfuls, castoffs. My living beating heart, all my love-blood.
It's the creep of old age across unrealized dreams.
It's the slipping of the mind, the stutter of the senses.
It's the unreliability of the narratives we tell ourselves to soothe or shape the senselessness and formlessness and chaos of the clay of experience. Things happen, around us, in us, to us. Too many things at once, there is no one tidy narrative. But we can't hold that much in our story-based brainforms.
No, no, it's not chaos. Let's spin it, centrifuge it into symmetry, form, USE.
It's the gap between mud and fine china.
These things sound harsh. Shards, gaps, disappointments, losses.
Grace is the kindness towards what IS. The release of what should have been.
Forgiveness of our parents for not loving us how we needed to be loved. We couldn't tell them, didn't have the words to say: I'll be okay, I love you, just let me walk through the brambles a little, bloody my edges. I'll come home safe.
Grace is kindness towards those lost potentials, forgiving all the ghosts of what could have been-- the unfulfilled potential successes, the unsung debuts.
It's forgiving ourselves for loving our children imperfectly, for our tiredness and sadness and impatience.
Grace is what we extend to ourselves and each other.
Seeing what is.
And saying
I see you. As you are.
I love you because
you are love.
No question of worthiness or unworthiness, or of potential or choice.
You are, therefore you are love.
That is grace.
That is what I want to open my heart up to feel.
We didn't talk about grace in the Mormon church when I was growing up. But the word has been rattling around in my head, banging pots and pans in my mind attic, trying to get my attention.
Grace is, I think, the gap between who you want to be and who you discover you actually are.
It's the gap between your potential and your visions and your plans, and the rough and sketchy road life drags you down.
It's the map plotting the difference between the person you thought your parent was, and who they really are.
It's the terrible equation to describe the blank wasteland between who you wish you could be for your kids, and the paltry whatever's on hand you can provide. Crumbles, handfuls, castoffs. My living beating heart, all my love-blood.
It's the creep of old age across unrealized dreams.
It's the slipping of the mind, the stutter of the senses.
It's the unreliability of the narratives we tell ourselves to soothe or shape the senselessness and formlessness and chaos of the clay of experience. Things happen, around us, in us, to us. Too many things at once, there is no one tidy narrative. But we can't hold that much in our story-based brainforms.
No, no, it's not chaos. Let's spin it, centrifuge it into symmetry, form, USE.
It's the gap between mud and fine china.
These things sound harsh. Shards, gaps, disappointments, losses.
Grace is the kindness towards what IS. The release of what should have been.
Forgiveness of our parents for not loving us how we needed to be loved. We couldn't tell them, didn't have the words to say: I'll be okay, I love you, just let me walk through the brambles a little, bloody my edges. I'll come home safe.
Grace is kindness towards those lost potentials, forgiving all the ghosts of what could have been-- the unfulfilled potential successes, the unsung debuts.
It's forgiving ourselves for loving our children imperfectly, for our tiredness and sadness and impatience.
Grace is what we extend to ourselves and each other.
Seeing what is.
And saying
I see you. As you are.
I love you because
you are love.
No question of worthiness or unworthiness, or of potential or choice.
You are, therefore you are love.
That is grace.
That is what I want to open my heart up to feel.
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