Grace (Eventually)

I love Anne Lamott. I love her because even though sometimes, theologically, I kinda raise my eyebrow, she always, always is honest and true. She struggles and whines and is delightfully human. And she has dreads, so really, how could you not love her?

And in her book Grace Eventually she says some really great and beautiful things. And it makes me remember that things like grace and healing, they're a part of that slow, hard work of life. The kind that easily gets traded into routine, or cast aside because it's not as exciting as the life we think we are supposed to be leading.

Truthfully, I'd have to say this is a sin of mine. This fantasizing about my life. Making it more glamorous than it really is. And all the while forgetting who and whose I am.

It's just, why does no one tell you life isn't as romantic as it sounds? That there is this whole huge middle part of your life that's filled with pretty much the same thing everyday. And that doesn't have to be bad. There's a lot to be learned from it. Like contentment. Commitment. Faithfulness. But, none of those words drudge up images of Fabio with Kristen Stewart hair, a Rico Swauvey open shirt, kissing your next as your bosom spills out a too small corset.

But, then again, no one writes the sequels to those Fabio stories. Ones that would read like Fabio goes to the doctor and finds out he has crabs. Or Fabio fathers another illegitimate child whom he has no more to do with than a check once a month. Or even, the illustrious, Fabio settles down, gets a job where he wears suits with the buttons, buttoned to the top, and marries the girl he got pregnant.

Now, there is a best seller waiting to happen.

But, those books, those stories, those fantasies, they all bank on magic to change us. And I, for one, watched Cinderella enough times to know that nothing is wrong with me, I am just not accessorizing correctly. Were it as simple as buying glass slippers, I'd be all over that.

Instead, it's the patience and the screaming and the scooting closer and closer and sometimes drastically in the other direction towards God. It's shrugging shoulders, raising hands. And when you think about it, it still is magic, but it's just a little more than the change of shoe. It's the transformation of heart.

And even though most days, I stomp might feet and want grace now.

I'm learning about the beauty in grace eventually.