A New Perspective on Grace (not my daughter)...

“Grace often doesn’t feel like grace when it is gracin’”. Leslie Motherfucking Strange

T R U T H.

Grace has felt like a lot of other things:  pain, loss, sorrow, grief, unfairness, injustice, etc.

I have a hard time letting things go.  Life has taught me it is easier to let go, then be dragged.  But still, sometimes, I hold on anyway.

I am not sure why, in this life, I have attempted to hold onto so many things that were just not meant for me.  But I have.  So many relationships, jobs, friends, men, situations that were simply just not for me.  And once I accepted this hard fact, the grace came for me.  However, so long as I was holding on, quite desperately, flexing my will and insisting that I knew better, we all suffered.

When my release of all that stuff that wasn’t for me was getting amped up, I didn’t see it as grace.  I saw it as anything but.  It didn’t feel graceful or peaceful or really all that great.  But in retrospect, I could always see the grace that came because of what was removed and, sometimes, added.

I am at a place in my life now where I am more accepting of the things that come.  The big deals have largely subsided.  I just show up and do my best. Somehow it will all work out.  It always does.  I rarely see the growth that is coming, it just arrives and I have to deal with it. I think I have gotten better at being present enough in my life that I just take what comes and accept that, no matter how I feel about whatever is happening, I am being delivered to my next lesson in grace.

I guess what comes up most for me today is how much I have mistaken growth for misunderstanding even though every single lesson I have been given in my life has pretty much demonstrated the same principle to me again and again:  life is not fair or just, life is just life and it will take what it wants and you, if you are lucky enough to still be here, just have to find a way to deal with it.

I have walked through some pretty hard shit.  And I think, for the most part, I have been a pretty good sport about it all.  The longer I am here and sober, the better I take things.  The more I am able to just accept what is and roll with it.  I have learned through much consternation and pain that life is going to do what it is going to do regardless of how I feel about it.

This week has been kind of a hard week.  I lost someone I cared about:  she took her own life.  A long time friend of my mom’s received a very hard diagnosis that does not bode well for her.  A painful part of my past will not seem to leave me alone.  Someone I counted on to do their part, did not.  Two women in my community have been killed in the last three months by the men they were involved with...And I will own this week has made me weary.  I have felt tired and out of sorts.  A low lying depression that hasn’t risen to the level of getting stalled out, but has dogged my every footstep as I trudged forward in my week.

I have gratitude for my life nonetheless.  In fact, I am pretty sure I have more than I did last week, although I am sure I felt better last week than I do this week.

Grace doesn’t often feel like grace when it is gracin...no fucking doubt about this one.

But regardless of how it feels, I can see the grace in everything I do and am privileged to get to do.  I can feel this immense level of gratitude for my life and all the “issues” that just come part and parcel to a life well lived.  I have fucked it up a lot and I have unfucked it.  And to some degree that is just what living is...a string of minutes, hours, days where we get to learn and grow or repeat and move further from the marker.

I have had to remind myself that life was not picking on me this week.  It is simply a hard week.  There is a woman I know in my town who is battling cancer, and has been for a long time.  She is one of the most positive and loving people.  She is kind and loving and supportive to people she barely knows.  Her life is hard and painful but she rises each day grateful to still be here.  I learn a lot from her example every day. (I see you Dawn!)

My friend who took her life has also taught me a few things this week.  First and foremost that things are not always as they appear.  I have absolutely no idea how much and in what ways someone is suffering.  I can sit next to someone in a group setting and judge their life as being good and loving, and I can be so very, very wrong.  I don’t know why she ended her life.  Was it a cry for help that went too far?  Could she really not handle life on life’s terms any longer?  Were there issues in play that I just didn’t know about?  How alone does a person have to feel to summon up the courage to take their own life?

I feel sad.  I feel a little lost.  And I feel devastated for her family.  I don’t know exactly why she is no longer with us, I just know that she isn’t.  And I know that I feel the pain of her loss acutely while also feeling like there was more I could have done.  Because of her, I will delve deeper with those who appear to be suffering and also those who seem just fine.  We humans are very good at creating a facade that hides our pain.

I know the events of this week are grace in action. More undeserved merit I seem to accumulate even though I feel like I get it all wrong more than I get it right.

To my friend and her family, you are in my thoughts and prayers and I will not forget her. She has taught me and I will take what I learned from her and do my best to use it to help another, maybe even myself.

To my mom’s friend who is struggling with a very hard diagnosis, I am sending you love and hugs and prayers.  I am holding you close and praying for you and your family.

For my friend who battles the cancer that has wrecked her body every single day, I see you.  I see your courage and grace under fire.  And I am in awe and amazed by you every single day.

To my ex who continues to reach out and wants to talk.  There is nothing left to say and I really, really, really need you to please just leave me alone.  It took a lot of my life to learn all the horrible things you had to teach me, and the ultimate lesson is that my life is way better without you in it.  Please respect that and leave me be.

To the one that let me down, I know you let yourself down more.  I know you are trying.  I see your effort and I am doing my best to support you. Perhaps this is just what had to happen to get a different behavior out of us both.

To the two women who died at the hands of men who were supposed to love them, I am so very sorry. I think of each of you multiple times a day. I feel your loss and am acutely aware that even in the 21st century, a woman's biggest predator is often the man she allows into her bed and life. I guess it has always been this way...I really wish we were further along on this. Know that I think of you both and while I am not sure yet what to do with all I feel about your deaths, know that I will do something to honor you in my own way and time.

It hasn’t felt like all that much grace this week, but regardless, it has been and I can feel it even while I am in the thick of it all...and that, for me, is the essence of all spiritual growth and practice...a unswerving commitment to continuing to trudge fonward (fucking onward for those of you who do not know).  And a true desire to help those about me who are struggling.  We all struggle, to struggle is to live.  Our struggles evince that we are still here, doing this whole living thing.  And thankfully the struggles do not end until we do.  And I am not ready for that to be my fate today.

So I rise up this morning and do the stuff that keeps me here.  Accumulating grace and all its attendant peril. It is a daring thing to live your life.  It is messy and painful and hard a great deal of the time.  But it helps me so much to realize that I am lucky enough to be here.  To share what I have learned and continue to learn, one motherfucking day at a time. (That was for you Lola, you would have liked that sentence).

All our days are numbered and the biggest mistake we all make in this life is twofold, it is to think we have more time and to fail to use the time we have to love and help others.  What I have learned and continue to learn in this life is that it is all about service.  And when I am engaged with service to God and others, the grace feels pretty graceful...even while it is gracin’!

Again..still.