Grace is my middle name, but I have a hard time with the concept of it.
On an intellectual level, I assent to its prominence in my faith—God's grace! Yup, couldn't live without it!
On, well, every other level, there's more of a struggle. Grace, yes, lovely idea—but how about I still try to do it all?
Through my job, I got to take a virtual course on "foundations of Christian leadership." On our first day of gathering, a fellow cohort member admitted to not having finished all the reading. Our leader, a coworker of mine who is fierce and no-nonsense and overall just very Texan, immediately stopped them. "Grace grace grace grace grace!" she said, in a quick staccato, no pauses.
That became a sort of pulsing mantra of that week, as we all confessed to our varied anxieties and failings. At one point I shared my insecurities about the project we'd be taking on at the end of this course—about how I felt the need to tackle something big, important, worthy.
The response came quick: "Grace grace grace! You don't have to do it all!"
Thankfully (graciously?) this phrase has been resurfacing for me in recent days, as I wonder (worry) about all the stuff I feel like I should be doing. There's a pandemic on, sure, but shouldn't I have worked on this newsletter a bit more? Started writing a book? Started writing a book proposal?
Grace grace grace grace grace.
Maybe you're feeling a bit of this too. Maybe it's not a newsletter or a book, but you're worried about where the time's going, what you feel you "should have" done by now, what you feel you "should be" doing—even amidst the absurdity of the moment we happen to be in.
Here's to us, finding some of that grace.