grace

Laced Together With Grace

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“When we keep our eyes on Jesus–remembering that He is the one we serve when we love others–the perspective and attitudes of our heart will be laced with the grace of Christ.” — Alyssa Bethke, from SheReadsTruth’s Colossians study

I love that phrase “laced with”. I’ve used it before in my own writing and it’s one of my favorite lovely phrases. To be laced is to be held together, held firmly. If I think of my heart’s perspective and attitudes as holding me together like a corset, informing my posture and gait, my attitude, and then I lace that heart corset with the grace of Jesus Christ, I can see His hand and love in everything.

When my soul aches, I can see Him refining me, just as a corset straightens my back and posture, and sometimes it aches, but it is being improved.

When I am tired and feel like I can’t hold up anymore, grace holds me tightly and reminds me that I can make it. I am supported. I can love, I can forgive, I can have courage, and be kind because I am constantly held up by Christ’s love and grace.

My word for 2016 is ‘grace’ and, as I am specifically working towards this, I hope it will come to be a part of me, my everyday wear, just as that corset might be, the longer I wear it. Kindness, love, compassion, empathy…my heart and actions laced together with grace.

 

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A Long Way from Home – Day 1: Bumping My Happy

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Back again in my childhood home. Haven’t even been here 24 hours and already someone in my family has commented that I look like I’ve gained weight. Not “You look nice” or “It’s good to see your face”. Heck, I would have even taken a “You look absolutely exhausted”  after twelve hours of traveling today. But, no, I get “But it looks like you’ve put on some weight.” Thanks. Really, thanks a lot. Sufficed it to say, coming back to my childhood home is almost never good for my self-esteem and, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s ever going to change. It’s always been this way. It doesn’t make it kind or right but it’s been happening for as long as I can remember. People who really have no business  commenting on others’ bodies (and often no leg to stand on) make snide comments that are really expected to be taken as a joke when, at best, they are assuming and dismissive and, at worst, can be emotionally devastating.

I have told the story of how a favorite dress (a gorgeous maroon and black cheongsam) was left to fade away into obscurity in my closet because someone thought it was their place and job to thoughtlessly inform me that I looked fat in it. What I will never forget is how confused he seemed when I told him not to speak to me anymore and to go away. As if he just couldn’t grasp why I was so upset. I know I spoke to that young man briefly at least one other time after that, when I was in grad school. This time, he expressed his surprise that I had a boyfriend but wouldn’t explain just why it was surprising. I will admit that I most definitely unfriended, deleted, and/or blocked him on all levels and platforms after that. That was an energy and presence that I just didn’t need.
Energy. I hadn’t thought of it that way but it’s an almost perfect example. It’s very, very hard when you expend such energy on your life, on doing what’s good for your family, for your child, for your friends, and for yourself, only to have the only thing remarked on to be your physical weight. Your particular form’s relationships with gravity. Just as you pour your energy out, others pour their energy into you, and deciding what to do with it–to use it to make bricks to add to my path or to sit in it and let it suck me down further–is really hard sometimes. The struggle is so very real when my happy-with-myself gets bumped. I do my best to either reply nicely or not reply at all. This seems like a prime opportunity to practice grace, as well as salting my words and reminding myself of my glorious.

Settling Into This Next Version of Myself

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My watchword for this year is grace and one of the books that I am reading (and have been looking forward to for a long while) is Jen Hatmaker’s For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards.

Quotes of the Day:

“Now fully able to cheer wildly for friends and colleagues, I am free to be me without the constrictive mesh netting around my heart, everyone else is free to be themselves, and I am thrilled about us all.” – pg 15

“You decide your day should contain laughter and grace, strength and security. You realize insecurity, striving, jealousy, and living in comparison will eventually define your entire life, and that is NOT the legacy you want.” – pg 16

“This is your place. These are your people. This is your beautiful, precious life. Probably about halfway done here on earth, you lay down angst and pick up contentment.” – pg 16

From Chapter 2: “On Turning Forty”.

This chapter is written as a small treatise from her now-forty-year-old self to those who are coming up behind her in their twenties. I am not yet forty but so much of this resonated with me, even at (only) thirty-two. What Jen writes here feels very much like what I am processing through right now.

“Oh, my stars, when I was twenty-nine, I was so hamstrung by what everyone else was accomplishing. Other people were my benchmarks, and comparison stole entire years. I lost much time in jealousy, judgement, and imitation. I just couldn’t find my own song (15).”

I could have honestly written this myself and it couldn’t be any more true. I lost years comparing myself to others and finding myself wanting or thinking that others found me wanting in important ways. I gave up a great deal of power to others over what I perceived was their disapproval or my being “too much”. It’s only now, quite a few years later, that I am finding a place of peace with myself and others, stopping the looking sideways so much, and, as Jen puts, it “developing some chops”.

My favorite quote, though, is at the end of this chapter:

“So, sure, your body and mind get whack, but I promise: you wouldn’t return to your twenties for all the unwrinkled skin on earth. You’ll like it here. You will love better, stand taller, laugh louder. You’ll pass out grace like candy. Real life will temper your arrogance and fear, and you will adore the next version of yourself. We all will (16).”

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Turning the Page

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As 2015 prepares to haul on its cloak and make its exit, I cannot help but throw my mind back over what has made my life important this year. Not just the wifely things or the mommy things, but what has been important to me, Mel, as a person.

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Holding On

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My Dearest Dears,

December has dawned in darkness and pain and grief. I have honestly avoided writing on all of this darkness because, well, it’s everywhere. Everyone is writing about it and good points have already been made. Outlining and highlighting the darkness is not my job. It is there, undeniable. It is truth, the starkest, coldest truth for some people, and what may be their only truth this Christmas. The statistics are there, etched and grooved in their own stoney reality. More shootings than there are days in the year. Families torn asunder on what was supposed to be a fun night out. A quiet dinner interrupted by a hail of gunfire and shrapnel. No, no one needs me to delve deeper into the darkness.

What is my job, though, is get out of the way of the light. No, I am not suggesting that we silver line these people’s pain. No. Never. I have never experienced such utter, violent loss. I have no frame of knowledge from which to speak to their pain. But I can acknowledge it and I do, with all my heart. I acknowledge their loss, their pain, their grief, their anger, their sadness, and join it in with them. I do not know these people, any of them here or abroad, but that doesn’t mean that I cannot take their grief as much to heart as I would those close to me.

But there is something else that I take to heart along with that grief. Something that I have noticed in so much of the aftermath of these events: the voices that come out of them. The voices of those who suffer this grief and loss. Their voices that call, beg, plead for peace. Their voices that admonish us to love, hold, do good unto, and care for others. Their voices that call for forgiveness. Their voices and lives that are the living proof that grace is a better choice than bitterness.

As we begin to close out this first week of Advent, this week of Hope, I am taking those voices to heart and soul. There may not be much or anything at all that I can do on a large scale, nor would I even know where to start, honestly, but I can do my best to do as they have asked. I can do my best to live in peace. I can love, hold, do good unto, and care for others. I can forgive. I can give grace instead of sinking into bitterness.

I can hold on to hope.

 

 

 

Giving of Your Grace

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Everyone has a grace. Everyone has a talent, a means of making an impact. Everyone is blessed with a grace.

I sat for almost a full minute, looking at my hand as it land upon the clean lined pages of my notebook, grasping a pen. I sort of marveled at the sight. here is my grace, my talent. I have a few, yes, but this is what I have considered and cultivated specifically as a talent: my writing. (I really should have someone sketch my hand holding a pen someday.)

Everyone has a grace. A grace that allows us to fill a specific place in our community of life. Whether that grace is teaching, cooking, speaking the truth, listening, organizing, or driving others around, it is something that helps others, something that someone may need. You don’t know who or where or when but your grace is important. It is needed; it is vital. Some may not see your grace, or they may not understand it even if they do see it, but that will only affect your grace if you allow it to, if you let it. I’m not saying that it will be easy all the time, that it won’t be frustrating or saddening. But it will only stifle your grace if you allow it to stifle your heart.

Grace is not only a fluidity of motion, it is not only composure and aplomb under pressure. Grace is the giving of love and kindness and honesty and help to others no matter how they may react, how they may treat you or others.  Grace is how you react and respond to others, not how they react or respond to you. I’m not writing this to preach at anyone. It’s on my mind and spilling out my fingers. Writing is my grace. I am endeavoring to write honestly and lovingly and, moreover, boldly about my life. Not everyone will agree or be happy with what I write but, at the same time, I may be fortunate enough to encourage someone else or give their soul some refreshing. I don’t flatter myself in that I might change lives, but I hope that I can be at least the smallest bit of help to someone somewhere.

Your grace can be the simplest of things, such as offering an upset friend a hot beverage to calm them. It may not mean much to you, but it could just mean everything to them. Your grace is important to life; it is vital.