Grace is When Your Belly Softens

and you feel that you can love yourself.

Hello Beautifuls!

Welcome to all of you who are new here this week!

And welcome back to everyone who’s been here before. I am honored and deeply moved by this community.

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xoxo

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Lovelies,

I've been busy with old work and new work and just such a lot of work these days. I try not to be overly busy, I don't subscribe to the admiration of busyness and overworked-ness. I subscribe to working poolside with frequent dips, taking naps and accepting licks from other people's dogs while taking a walking break from the screen.

Some weeks however, are just busier than others. I thought for most of today, it's 4:57 Central Time as I write this, that I would have to tell you all I had no time this week create something meaningful for you.

At some point around 2:30, I wrapped up a call with my client (who is also a dear friend) in which she'd asked if I could take on another eight small writing projects and turn them around by Thursday end of day. I said yes, willingly and gladly, I love this work.

And then, as I took a break and floated on my back in the pool, I realized I knew exactly what I wanted to tell you.

That I chose to give myself grace today around my full schedule and my lack of being able to write anything this week worth sharing with you. Not for a lack of trying, I’ve written, quite a bit actually, just nothing that gelled or came together in any form that wanted to be shared.

I chose to give myself some grace, and I could feel it in that moment. A softening, a spaciousness, the world got more shiny. It’s like grace is glitter Modge Podge for our souls.

We are all so full of the doing of things, pressured by our culture and its patriarchal lens of success, and yet I know, I know, that what we are here for is to love each other and be bowled over, on a moment to moment basis, by the wonder and beauty of this world. For me right now, it's the thinning golden light of late summer, the dried leaves scraping the concrete in the small breeze, the ripples on the pool's surface and the big, puffy white clouds against the light, light, blue sky. 

So in honor of grace, I offer you some of my favorite words on the subject and I invite you to give yourself (and maybe someone else) a little grace today. 

I’m curious - what does that look like for you? Please oh please let’s share grace in the comments today! ✨

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.- Anne Lamott

Grace does not mean we don't make mistakes, but it does mean we won't be defined by them. - Father Gregory Boyle. Note: if you've never read his essays, do. They are heartbreaking and heartfilling all at the same time. My favorite is Tattoos on the Heart. 

You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I'll take grace. I don't know what it is exactly, but I'll take it. - Mary Oliver

Grace is when your belly softens and you feel like you could love yourself as much as you love your dog, even if just for a moment. - This one is mine. ❤️

And here is one of my favorite short/flash essays from one of my favorite writers, Grace Paley. I've been reading this essay since I was an English major in college, some 26 years ago. The descriptions were no less beautiful then, but on my second marriage, after death and moves and life, I see and feel so much more of the aboutness of this piece in my bones, and it is even more beautiful to me now.

It, also, is about grace. 

Wants

by Grace Paley

I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.

Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.
The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.

That’s possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began.Then we didn’t seem to know them any more. But you’re right. I should have had them to dinner.

I gave the librarian a check for $32. Immediately she trusted me, put my past behind her, wiped the record clean, which is just what most other municipal and/or state bureaucracies will not do.

I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I’d read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago.

A nice thing I do remember is breakfast, my ex-husband said. I was surprised. All we ever had was coffee. Then I remembered there was a hole in the back of the kitchen closet which opened into the apartment next door. There, they always ate sugar-cured smoked bacon. It gave us a very grand feeling about breakfast, but we never got stuffed and sluggish.

That was when we were poor, I said.

When were we ever rich? he asked.

Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn’t go in need. You took adequate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things.

I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn’t want anything.

Don’t be bitter, I said. It’s never too late.

No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I’m doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it’s too late. You’ll always want nothing.

He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber’s snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, half-way to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.

I looked through The House of Mirth, but lost interest. I felt extremely accused. Now, it’s true, I’m short of requests and absolute requirements. But I do want something.
I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.

I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.

I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn’t exhaust either man’s qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.

Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives.

Well! I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that when a person or an event comes along to jolt or appraise me I can take some appropriate action, although I am better known for my hospitable remarks.

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I hope this leaves you filled and feeling loved.

That is my intention today, to add a little more love to the world.

xo

j

I would love to hear your stories or experiences or thoughts on grace. Please oh please let’s share grace in the comments today! ✨