I love the word grace.  

I struggle to find right words to describe why.  

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines grace as implying a benign attitude.   Benign, defined as showing gentleness and kindness. 

Through its multitude of perspectives, google searching offers assistance in defining grace as acceptance.   The exercise of love.   Mercy (compassion or forgiveness towards others, especially those less fortunate).   Disposition to benefit or serve another.  Something done or given in grace is done so without expecting to receive anything in return. 

I think of my grandparents who always said let us say grace before meals.   Bless this food to our bodies. 

Novelist Anne Lamott says it well.  I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.  

Each year my mom, sister, niece and I select a theme for our advent calendars to guide what we gather for filling each other’s twenty-four days of December.   This past year my theme was grace.  

To guide my mom and sister in calendar fillings, I referenced a definition from Oxford simple elegance or refinement of movement; “she moved through the water with effortless grace”.  I offered they also think: grace with life’s flow.  Grace like the gentleness of deer.  Dance of grace between opposites. 

Grace was my intentional word for all of 2023.  

Yes, dear Ms. Lamott, grace meets us where we are when we hold an intention that it will.

We are never the same once it does. 

Grace always shocks.  Grace always stuns.  Grace is always what we need.   It’s what everyone groping around lost in the dark has to know.  Turn towards grace and you turn on all the lights.  – Ann Voskamp

Like the sudden shock when a bird hits our picture window.   The little one lying stunned on the grass as I rush to my shoes, then door, then to a feathered being with intended hope that my compassion and gentle grace will provide what is needed for the little one to choose to fly again. 

Like this dear little Chickadee chose to do. 

Flying again, but no longer the same.  

Just as I, too, changed, now observing chickadees in a new way.   Curious if one of them at the feeder is my new friend.    Retaining awe in being able to hold a winged friend in my hand, against my heart, for a few brief moments. 

Ah, but then again, it only takes one brief moment to experience a profound shift.  

To spread one’s wings.   And fly.      

Grace always shocks. 

Like the sudden shock when my lap met boiling water in mid-December.  In an instance of shocking pain, I received a profound gift of stunning grace.

Now I ponder how best to articulate in an inspiring blueprint you can utilize. My ability to articulate may prove as challenged as my attempt to define the beauty, elegance, and significance of grace. 

Each of us has lesson plans our souls desire to learn in our lifetimes.   One of my most favorite (and life changing for me) books, The Little Soul and the Sun, describes wanting to experience what it means to forgive.   The book also highlights many other words one might choose to learn in a lifetime, like being kind, sharing, gentle, creative, patient, and helpful.   

To name a few things we humans may wish to learn.     

For the longest time I thought one of my words was hope, yet where I sometimes struggled to connect with this is that I didn’t remember a time in life where I felt hopeless.   Not that I needed to feel and experience hopelessness to desire to learn hope.  But, since I believe that because we don’t recall what we want to learn when we enter this life in human form, we first experience elements of the opposite so that we can have experiences to teach and grow us – i.e. to learn the essence of hope is to know the absence of hope. 

At times I’ve thought one of my words was forgiveness.       

I’ve certainly believed it was several words combined.   Comfort in my own skin.  

Then grace shocked, handing me its elegance.   In the searing moment of immediate skin shedding through the flaming delivery of hot water, I surrendered the deep and unconscious belief and fear that I had been holding onto.   

Oh, tis true the words that we teach what we most wish to learn.   I, one to reframe stories for others, guiding that they see and see again, needed the sacred gift of grace’s shock to help me frame my own differently. 

I needed to experience burning away the remaining old skin tattooed (figuratively) with the belief that I was selfish to be seen and heard in my own skin.   

So that in the new skin I could see my soul’s deepest wish that had been there all along.  

I needed to dance with grace to my center, recognizing that in my struggle with a fear of selfishness was the conflict with my heart’s deepest desire in how it wanted to be seen and heard.      

Generous.  My soul’s choosing for this lifetime.    

Generous in compassion. 

In inspiration not to give up on this beautiful life.  

In time given to others.   In gift-giving.  

In nonjudgment, dignity, unconditional listening.  

In faith.  In hope.  

In teaching the power of words.   For words determine the life we will experience.   What words are chosen.  How they are spoken, written, read, and heard.  

Generous in words that offer wisdom.   That strive to be Nature’s worthy messenger.      

In words that offer

grace. 

What story might you be telling yourself that deserves your grace?  

We are beginning anew, an unchartered horizon ahead of us as we begin a new year.  My wish for you, may 2024 include gentleness and kindness, acceptance, the exercise of love.  

May you move through the water [of this very beautiful life] with effortless grace.

May you always catch your breath, spread your wings, and fly.