We rolled out our mats, side by side, and gathered all of the props the instructor asked us to. Two blocks, check. Two blankets, check. Tennis ball, check. As we started, despite it being my cousin’s first yoga class and my umpteenth, it was mere seconds before all of my self awareness sunk in and I remembered how ungraceful I was in my practice. How the disability I have and have always had didn’t allow me to ease into one pose after the next. That I had to drop to my knees to readjust between planks and downward facing dogs, no flow, more like a clunk as my body shifted its gears from one position to the next. That I couldn’t always get into a certain twist….or out of one for that matter. While my lack of finesse has been true in every yoga class I’ve ever taken I was acutely aware in the room where someone knew me, of how ungracious my moves were, how clunky, how elementary, how unedited they were….but I kept going.
We are so ungracious, clunky, elementary, and unedited in this thing we call life. With plenty of people bearing witness- parents, partners, lovers, besties, children, aunties, cousins, colleagues, students, the crossing guard and the cashier. Our moves are so unsmooth. We forget, we remember too late, we cuss, we fuss, we gossip, we covet, do just enough to get by. We cheat, we sneak, we procrastinate, we look for the shortcuts. We berate ourselves for eating too much, saving too little, not studying enough, not passing the boards the first time around. We say yes when we want and need to say no. We say no when we want and need to say yes. We are impatient, irritable, we are hopelessly imperfect and yet grace sees us and covers us, gifting us with the grit to keep going. One clunky move at a time.
We keep going until we graduate. We keep going to therapy until life hurts less, we sleep more soundly, we can ground ourselves when waves of anxiety attempt to drown us. We keep going in our jobs until the project is finished, the grant is awarded, the policy is amended or enacted, the student has going from failing to passing, We keep going with our exercise routines until the breathing while doing so is less laborious, the pounds have been shed, muscles toned, body strengthened. We keep going in our relationships, jumping one hurdle and confident we will jump the next. We leap over communication styles, how we resolve conflict, where to live, whose in law’s we go to for Thanksgiving so that we can leap the hurdles of the debt, the illness, the miscarriage, the infidelity. We keep going.
I don’t mean to suggest that we never stop. That grace drives us and never lets us rest. On the contrary. Grace makes plenty of room for us to rest, to pause, to take a breath. To plank, drop to our knees, lift our entire being into a downward facing dog…and hold it there. Grace will not let us go in vain, or let us go at the detriment of ourselves. Nor will it quit, give up, throw in the towel, throw out the baby with the bath water, lock us out and turn a deaf ear to our knocking. Grace will simply and sufficiently give us space to maneuver as best we can without judgment or ridicule, without shame or curiosity, and any lack- it handles. Read that again.
Any lack, it (grace) handles.
I don’t know where you feel ungracious, clunky, elementary, or unedited in your life. Maybe in your marriage, maybe in your romantic relationship, maybe in your friendships, your job, your attempt at this entrepreneur or freelance life. Maybe in your attempt at peace at choosing not to have children and navigating well intended people’s opinions about it, maybe in the pile of rejection letters after the numerous applications sen, maybe navigating a grief that has left you unexpectedly raw. I don’t know where you feel acutely aware of all that you are not but I want to remind that I AM has given you grace for that too. He’s given provision, compassion, insight- all that you need for it. I don’t know where you may be super tempted to stop, but I pray that you hear grace whisper keep going, let us keep going.
With Love,
Grit + Grace