Don’t press play yet! I’ll tell you when!

My mom tries to never give me advice unsolicited. In fact, it is funny now, the way I cling to her for answers and is the first person I think of when I feel stuck or screwed or scared or really fucking upset, because there was a time when I would sooner die than consider her insights [Because I was a snotty, defensive, precocious brat who thought I knew everything (was! was!)]. BUT THAT IS BESIDES THE POINT.

But the one thing she would always preach about— and by preach I mean write into birthday cards when I was in far-off places, or slip into those letters the Catholics are always making you write (am I the only one? Were they not always mandating that our parents write us letters, at retreats, at sacraments, on the first day of college, etc, etc? I think because they knew! They knew they gave us all of this shame and guilt, so much that we couldn’t communicate under normal terms and these Life Change Letters were the only chance we had! Well let the record stand: they were right! Thx Catholicism!)— anyway the one thing she would beg me to consider, was grace. Grace. Not really a fun one, in my opinion. As a baby’s name? Sure! Cute baby name! But gift of the holy spirit? I had seen better. I never really knew what it was; it didn’t interest me.

Do things with grace! she would say. Or probably something that sounded a little better. Grace? Fuck it. Grace is for ballerinas. I was never graceful. I was a wreck, I was sarcastic and self-righteous and I danced on the tables at gifted class with my teacher’s inflatable emperor penguin when she left the room. Grace was not my strong suit. Throwing girl’s purses across the room so that her pantyliners flew across the floor while she looked on in horror because I hated her for mispronouncing ‘fury’ as ‘furry’ in our halloween puppet show? My strong suit.

(Although, really, I was mostly a painfully shy, dorky, and well-behaved. I won the Best Christian award in 2nd grade! BEST CHRISTIAN. They gave it to someone every year! I was literally the best Christian in 1992).

Anyway: grace. I had it not. So I just looked it up in Wikipedia. Buckle up your safety belts. My dad always said, “Hold onto your asses!” when he was switching into his federal agent, car-chase style driving. Hold onto your asses! Is that a thing? I don’t think it is. Hats? yes. Asses? No. Although I’ve never been so impressed by my father (and I do mean never) than when he crossed 6 lanes of traffic, practically driving parallel, without hesitation.

Okay Wikipedia has a lot to say. The basic idea is that it is not deserved. It’s God’s Love that we fucked up a long time ago (DEBATABLE!) (I should be a Theology professor, eh?) but that still finds its way to us, because, well, the Catholics say it’s because Jesus jumped up on the cross but I would say Love still exists in grace because, my god! That is all there is! There has to be. We have to believe that: that God/Love can sort of miraculously wiggle into situations where we did not earn it. That is the great consolation of Life, is it not?

I think the reason I never wrapped my head around Grace, despite my mother’s best intentions, is that I always confused it with mercy (TELLING, RIGHT?). Mercy? I am great at mercy. Too good sometimes. And then very bad, to make up for being too good at it. But yes: mercy. Ya know, the thing Uncle Jesse says after he kisses Aunt Becky? Haha.

I think I do mercy too well because I lose faith in grace. Grace is different.

Wikipedia sez:

Grace is often distinguished from mercy in that mercy is seen as not receiving punishment that one deserves to receive, whereas grace is the receipt of a positive benefit that one does not deserve to receive.

Oh god that is terrifying, right? It is to me. Because I am insane? Catholic? That’s not something i feel like I can count on too well! I can do the mercy thing because I can hope that maybe if I suffer e-fucking-nough I will earn grace. But, wait! Fuck! You can’t earn grace! Well, fuck me, that fucking sucks. That’s why I hate grace! It requires faith! DAMMIT.

Anyway, I’ll let you know when I go on the road with that little exegesis so you can all reserve front row seats.

So last night after having a day of interpersonal exchange that might have made God puke if he wasn’t so busy not existing— HAH— I realized I hadn’t eaten a goddamn thing all day. So, I called up my friends and we went to get sushi.

Now this was one of those God-puke-worthy situations where the waitress comes to the table no less than 3x to ask if we are ready to order and we still haven’t opened our menus because I am so caught up in the overwrought emotional drama of my own ridiculous attempts at, well, life. In a word (what? that’s so untrue, I just love saying the phrase, ‘in a word’), it was what it sometimes means to be a woman. We have already been over this.

Okay hit play.

So in this restaurant, and it was a fucking SUSHI place I might add, not a diner, not a goddamn MCDONALD’S, they are playing goddamn motherfucking Delilah. COME ON, GOD. ENOUGH FUCKING WITH ME. And pretty soon, this song comes on.

Now until this point, I am pretty fucking serious and dramatic. I am wearing the Hoodie of Great Personal Trauma. It is blue. I quite like it.

My hair was a mess, and filled with a lot of self-righteous indignation. A lot of shaking my fist at the universe. Then this song came on. Then Lindsay buried her face in her hands laughing. WHAT I said, WHAT??? (I was very high strung, if I haven’t hammered that home yet). I CAN’T HEAR THE SONG WHAT IS IT?? And she told me not to listen but she laughed and Halle laughed and through all of that, I started to hear the words.

And I yelled at laughed and slammed my hands on the table and what’s the word when you are like, I DEFY YOU STARS!!! Whatever that was. Beseeching? I was hilariously, hilariously bemused. Like ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS?

And we all laughed so much and I couldn’t help but have that moment of, YOU GUESSED IT, mother fucking GRACE. I was detached from my bullshit drama that means nothing in the grand scheme of things and was so filled with my own ego i can’t even begin to tell you, and I could not help but laugh. There existed myself, suffering and flailing and indignant, and there was this other me, the Self me, who wanted to hug Sad Me and laugh at her. And laugh at this fucking ridiculous song that yes, wiggled its way into my life where I maybe didn’t deserve it (okay, I totally deserved it) (just kidding) and into this silly point in my life that filled with things I did and did not deserve- which after awhile makes you reconsider the notion of deserving anything (but that just may be a whole different set of issues).

So, anyway that— that moment of levity, that lightning bolt of What Matters and Who I Was and that peace amidst anything but— that is (right Mom?) Grace.

Little miracles when you don’t even believe in them.

SO THANKS, MOM. THANKS, CATHOLICS. THANKS DAN HILL AND VONDA SHEPHERD. (I know, who the hell??).

Best Christian! Don’t you forget it!