I love the mornings through and through. I am relentlessly up early, comfortably letting the sun rise before me, but proudly not trailing too far behind. There’s a coolness in the warmer months and a brisk coldness in the cooler months. There is movement, dog walkers, runners, those ending shifts, those starting shifts, cars, trolleys, buses but never hustle and bustle. There is no onslaught of the mundane busy that begins by seven thirty. Even if I am on my own familiar morning path to the gym, park, or to get tea, it always feels ripe and ready, with just enough slowness and ease for me to notice. And in true morning form, as I made my way from the Starbucks that is so close to me yet I often forget exists, except on days like today when my body is begging me to slow down, in my slowness I noticed how slowly the trolleys were driving over what was once a sinkhole. I noticed the way they slowed down and hesitantly rolled over the concrete that stood alone all tan, not matching the black top that was there before or that surrounds it. With what seems like strange trepidation the trolleys roll forward and then picks up speed again making familiar curves and turns down to the tunnel.
The trolleys move forward like we do when we remember a wound. When we recall a scar. When the sirens awaken us like the time before. When the raised voice stirs in us something we’d rather it not. When the touch, gentle, slight, loving reels in us the thoughts of all the touches that were anything but, yet were always intended to be. When the smell begins an acrobatic show in the pit of our stomachs that we declined tickets to eternally. We are acutely aware that in reality “it” is over. “It” happened. Yet when we find ourselves on the cusp of the reminder, of the unsafe, we sometimes move like the trolley with slow trepidation…or we don’t move at all.
I remember the months I didn’t apply for jobs. Oh I both needed and wanted to. Honestly I think I wanted to more than needed to. I wanted to be the mature, responsible adult, working, paying my way, affording the needs and wants of my life, rising to the demand of capable, functioning, healthy, thriving, adult. However, the experiences I had, never mind them being in other cities, were all too real. As I moved toward the reminders of the sinkhole of traumatic work experiences in my life I could not move forward. I came to a dead halt. Everybody and everything off. Last stop. Lights out. Keys out the ignition.
I’m learning that grace doesn’t see us and hold what was against us. It does not hold us hostage to life’s fall outs. It does not wait to remind us of the last time or the last times. It does not approach us, acutely aware of how we have rejected it, and come to a dead halt. Everybody and everything off. Last stop. Lights out. Keys out the ignition. It sees us and will absolutely move slowly, aware of the ways in which we have been hurt, are still in recovery, still fragile and tender from life’s circumstances, including circumstances totally crafted by us, by our unwillingness, our stubbornness, or needing to be rightness or prove someone else wrongness.
Grace, while eager to lavish us with all of it’s tailor made perfect sufficiency, will not force us forward, but will go oh so slowly so that we might move forward in all that it has planned for us and deems us fully worthy and capable of.
My hope for you this week is that as you find yourself approaching still tender places in your life that you are gracious with yourself, compassionately and slowly moving forward. That while you may remember, that you do not recoil. That you go slow, but that you go nonetheless. That you go knowing that God in all of His goodness and grace is ever present, ever reminding you that because His grace is enough, you too are enough. It’s not the last stop, fan the flickering flame of light that is still on in your soul, in that dream, in that goal, and keep the key in the ignition, maybe tap the brakes a bit more, but keep going forward with grit knowing grace has you covered.
With Love,
Grit + Grace