Where you are supposed to be
A long time ago, someone gave me a quote and I have pulled it out and read it many times, and given it to those who I thought needed it, and preserved it for future reminders.
I was feeling boxed in recently. I felt suffocated by events out of my control. And I realized how convenient it is to fall into a pattern of belief and then I watched Obama’s eulogy of Senator Clementa Pinckney and listened to him say how the killer thought he would incite hatred but he did not know God had a different plan, instead of hate, there is grace.
And I remember the grace that is my life – the gift of being surrounded by people who love and support and lift me up. I recall that I have been down and lifted myself back up. I remembered I have thought that falling down was no good, only to learn the further I fell the more it moved me along my path.
I forget that when I am tired, I seek easy answers: Get a job with a company and do their bidding rather than bring my own work. I forget to be kind to a 56 year old woman who is raising a 6 year old boy. I forget to use all the tools that are always at my disposal – to take a walk in nature, to call a loved one, to read a good book, to simply write – in order to sit with my discomfort, not wallow in it.
It has been a week of grace. When I started working with the community on race relations, I envisioned tearing down Confederate statues on Jeff Davis, but I shrunk my vision to accommodate a more doable solution advocated by the group I was working with – and then overnight the country’s vision notched up and made my big dream conceivable. This week, my Facebook feed lit up with colors of the rainbow – the Supreme Court proved capable of interpreting the law of this country for the people by the people and they did so by making gay marriage legal. Obamacare – health care for everyone – won the day. I’ve watched our President lose his fear, his need to placate every faction, and rise up to be the man we all knew him capable of being.
From the personal to the universal, this has been a week of low and high, of grit and grace, and it has ended on a high note. I was blind but now I see. Hallelujah!