Thursday, September 15, 2005

from the small hours: thoughts on grace

It’s been a long day. Why, then, was I just staring up at my roommate’s bed, thinking (in my nearsighted way) that the underside of the mattress looks like the roly-poly bugs I played with fifteen years ago?

This is what I get for reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek before bed.

Also before bed come the worries about the next few days and weeks: an ugly parade of anxieties. And I know about parades. Three years in marching band gave me a new perspective. Parades are woolen pants in summer, grit in your contacts, and marking time in horse poop. This is the parade that stomps by before I fall asleep some nights, with all its frightening clowns.

Tonight, though, started with a simple, one-act show: Can I get it all done? Major deadlines are still weeks off, but they whisper at me from the syllabuses (syllabi??) tucked away in my folders and drawers. But—because this is the kind of girl I am—I worry. During the days, I plan and plan, until I feel I’m living the whole week at once. (And no, that doesn’t help.)

Please don’t be mistaken: I love my classes. I’m sincerely interested in all of them. I just also sincerely worry over all of them.

Which brings me to grace. Every syllabus is good for my prayer life. When the things I have to do are small, and when I can behave well, I feel the lie of self-sufficiency. But when demands and ambitions squeeze, all my patches and seams begin to show. I crack, and run home to Daddy.

Funny, because this is when I’m most inept, most self-doubting, feeling my stupidest, my ugliest. Incapable, which is a bad feeling for me.

It comes down to that old confirmation verse I had to memorize in junior high: For it is by grace we have been saved.

And I like receiving grace. I can’t wrap my mind around it—sometimes I fight it, often times I forget it. But there’s another trap—one far removed from my syllabus pile and my planning and parades. I got up from under the roly-poly mattress and sat in our kitchen at one a.m. to puzzle out this:

What do I do with grace?

People talk about grace as a gift. But I can have a bad habit with gifts: I hide them. I tuck them away, save them, hoard them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found a stockpile of Christmas candy, pushing three years old. A good gift and a fun one, and I wanted to keep—not eat—it. (Snickers bars are the same way for me.)

But how devastating, how deadly, to do the same with grace. To stock it with my dusty candy canes, forbid it to see the light of day, but occasionally to go to visit it, say, when a paper is due?

I am continually reminded of the ways I’ve been bruised over the years. (Haven’t we all?) A few fractures go to the core; in many other places I was stung, but the stinger remains. I bristle, and I do not forget. I still see these people—yes, even some at Calvin.

I remember an image from a story, back in the roly-poly years. I can’t remember the plot, but I can still picture the woman. She looked like a beggar, must have smelled like a beggar. Somehow the people of the village got a hold of her—she must have been sick or dead—and found in all the layers of her dirty cloaks gold coin after coin, stitched meticulously in place.

Oh, God, how this scares me.

I’m desperate for handouts, then stricken with spiritual arthritis—I can’t always release the coins again. I’ve sewed years of forgiveness and compassion into hems and pockets and sleeves. They trickle out, and sometimes stream, but shouldn’t they gush?

When battered, shouldn’t I bleed grace?—jl

Posted by Jenn Langefeld on 09/15 at 01:59 AM
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