If Grace were a landscape, it'd be the beach.
Serene and calm, inviting and blue. A place to relax, to bask in it, to let it warm you and lull you into a peaceful sleep. I've had some of the best naps of my life on the beach. The warm sand, the gentle crashing waves, the balmy, temperate air.
The beach is where I go when I need to feel grounded. When things get overwhelming, I head to the beach, to look out across all that endless water. To remember how small and insignificant the things that loom over me can actually be.
Ever since my last post, I've been letting Grace marinate. When I was a child, my mother had the brilliant (please detect my sarcasm) idea of enrolling me in ballet. For about six months of my life and one highly embarrassing VHS tape, I was crammed into frilly pink tutus, my arms bent in front of me as if they were broken, plodding around on tiptoes in a musky dance studio on a military base. In my head, I thought I was graceful. It's what Lana, my dance teacher used to preach. She'd pace the wooden floor in her leotard, frizzy late 90s hair in a messy ponytail, she'd rapt the bar with a baton and bark, "Grace, girls, grace!"
Serene and calm, inviting and blue. A place to relax, to bask in it, to let it warm you and lull you into a peaceful sleep. I've had some of the best naps of my life on the beach. The warm sand, the gentle crashing waves, the balmy, temperate air.
The beach is where I go when I need to feel grounded. When things get overwhelming, I head to the beach, to look out across all that endless water. To remember how small and insignificant the things that loom over me can actually be.
Ever since my last post, I've been letting Grace marinate. When I was a child, my mother had the brilliant (please detect my sarcasm) idea of enrolling me in ballet. For about six months of my life and one highly embarrassing VHS tape, I was crammed into frilly pink tutus, my arms bent in front of me as if they were broken, plodding around on tiptoes in a musky dance studio on a military base. In my head, I thought I was graceful. It's what Lana, my dance teacher used to preach. She'd pace the wooden floor in her leotard, frizzy late 90s hair in a messy ponytail, she'd rapt the bar with a baton and bark, "Grace, girls, grace!"
But grace wasn't something to be barked. And it wasn't something inherent. At least not for me.
Ever since Lana's obsession with grace and seeing the more senior ballerinas twirl in blurs of tuille, I wanted to be graceful. I envied the pristine, neat girls in my class who never had hangnails or crumpled pages in their binders. Who had pens without chewed caps and perfect erasers and beautiful penmanship.
I was (still am) rough around the edges. Not necessarily refined and not one to make too much of a fuss over typically girly things. Not that I'd be first in the queue for sports, either, mind. I'd rather ... hide in a kitchen and cook. Not in a girly, let's bake cupcakes way. But in a Michelin-starred chef, check out this salmon mousse with scallop foam and cucumber mace reduction, Gordon Ramsay is my foul-mouthed hero, I should have gone to school to be a professional chef and not a writer way. Those are my digs. And there's not really anything graceful about the kitchen, is there? Lots of heat, steam, muck and mess.
But I think that's maybe why I'm so ...attuned to and in awe of Grace. Proper Grace. Not the whimsical frolic of an anorexic ballerina or the frustratingly unchewed pen caps of the OCD. I mean Grace that paints me with a rose colored hue when God looks down at me so that he sees me, for what I'd like to be, the product of all my well-wishes and good intentions and not the actual me.
Because if was up to me, I'd have given up on me a long time ago. But I'm thankful for a God who knows and understands that it's not just the road to hell that's paved with good intentions. All roads are. That's what Grace understands: it understands that we keep falling short. That we keep intending for 1, 2, 3 to happen but continuously get stuck with 4, 5, and 6.
For me, Grace is something to revel in. To relish and be stunned by.
I don't have the amount of patience God has to be so gracious.
I don't have the amount of love He has to be so consistent.
I'd like to. And I try to. I try to practice patience and grace and consistency and unwavering love.
It's the times that I fail (I'm batting 0 for 6 today) that I'm even more in awe of and astounded by Him.
That's when Grace gets me all giddy ... and grateful.
Ever since Lana's obsession with grace and seeing the more senior ballerinas twirl in blurs of tuille, I wanted to be graceful. I envied the pristine, neat girls in my class who never had hangnails or crumpled pages in their binders. Who had pens without chewed caps and perfect erasers and beautiful penmanship.
I was (still am) rough around the edges. Not necessarily refined and not one to make too much of a fuss over typically girly things. Not that I'd be first in the queue for sports, either, mind. I'd rather ... hide in a kitchen and cook. Not in a girly, let's bake cupcakes way. But in a Michelin-starred chef, check out this salmon mousse with scallop foam and cucumber mace reduction, Gordon Ramsay is my foul-mouthed hero, I should have gone to school to be a professional chef and not a writer way. Those are my digs. And there's not really anything graceful about the kitchen, is there? Lots of heat, steam, muck and mess.
But I think that's maybe why I'm so ...attuned to and in awe of Grace. Proper Grace. Not the whimsical frolic of an anorexic ballerina or the frustratingly unchewed pen caps of the OCD. I mean Grace that paints me with a rose colored hue when God looks down at me so that he sees me, for what I'd like to be, the product of all my well-wishes and good intentions and not the actual me.
Because if was up to me, I'd have given up on me a long time ago. But I'm thankful for a God who knows and understands that it's not just the road to hell that's paved with good intentions. All roads are. That's what Grace understands: it understands that we keep falling short. That we keep intending for 1, 2, 3 to happen but continuously get stuck with 4, 5, and 6.
For me, Grace is something to revel in. To relish and be stunned by.
I don't have the amount of patience God has to be so gracious.
I don't have the amount of love He has to be so consistent.
I'd like to. And I try to. I try to practice patience and grace and consistency and unwavering love.
It's the times that I fail (I'm batting 0 for 6 today) that I'm even more in awe of and astounded by Him.
That's when Grace gets me all giddy ... and grateful.