Grace Over Perfection
It’s well below freezing. I have on thermal pants, two sweaters, a down jacket, a wool hat, multiple pairs of socks, and ski gloves…oh yes…and a blanket. I’m sitting on my front porch watching my friend wriggle herself into the other Adirondack chair. Her wine is balanced carefully in her mittened hands as she shifts to pull her blanket in tightly to keep out the frost filled breeze. It has been months since we have had the chance to sit just the two of us. Life has been hard, unexpected and exhausting.
It might be 2021 (goodbye 2020), but we are still sitting in the cold outside, making lemonade out of lemons.
I sit in awe of this friend of mine. Thrilled for a quiet moment to actually talk. No children. No husbands. No jobs. Phones away. Throughout the past year, she has not only walked through the uncertainty and upheaval of the pandemic, but she has done so with teenaged daughters in tow, a busy husband, a frenzied job, and the weight of the grief of losing her mother in the middle of it all. To me, it is astounded that we can be here at all. I will sit on the porch with her until my fingers fall off from frostbite. She has made it so far.
And yet, as we sit, I realize that she doesn’t see this. She sees the laundry that isn’t done, the people she hasn’t had a chance to see, the comfort food she doesn’t want to stop eating, the workouts she can’t bring herself to do, the miles she hasn’t run.
I don’t think we are the only two having conversations like this one. There are so many of us struggling to live up to a standard of perfection that is impossible. A standard of accomplishment that’s weight is unbearable.
This can’t be her story. This can’t be our stories. Hers is one of strength, love and perseverance. Not of failures and shame. She has done remarkable things. Hard things. And she is loved deeply by all of us, and by a God who sees her through the lens of never-ending grace.
GRACE - unmerited, unearned favor, mercy and compassion. Love like none other.
God doesn’t ask us to live up to a standard. God hasn’t set-up an obstacle course for us to run through in order to receive God’s love. It is simply given. Nothing asked in return. I believe our ability to see the gift of this grace breaks us open to give and receive this grace to ourselves and others.
Instead of seeing the holes, instead of feeling less than, instead of judging, my hope for us this year is that we let grace be our response to it all.
Grace in the “big” things and grace in the small moments when making dinner or putting on a cheery face feels like too much. This has been a hard time. It’s okay to see it as so. It’s okay to give ourselves time to heal, reflect, and know we are loved in it all.
My friend and I left the porch when we literally couldn’t feel our feet anymore or ignore our children’s calls for dinner any longer. But as we said goodbye, we both acknowledged that it was time to try a new way. A better way. The way of grace.
Now is as good a time as ever to step out of the belief that perfection is anything other than a myth, and into the truth and freedom of grace!