“All is grace in our one brutal and beautiful life.” - Ann Voskamp
One of my very favorite places. Someday, I'll have an epic party on that rooftop.
I wonder if grace is written in the sunsets and the clear blue skies and iced half-decaf mint lattes by the pool and clothes that are not maternity but still miraculously fit. I wonder if grace is found in quiet mornings by the ocean, the perfect glass of pinot noir rosé, and running into friends at the farmers’ market.
I wonder if grace is holding both the light and the darkness, what is and what isn’t, the homecoming and the ache. I wonder if grace is being showered with love that you don’t deserve and never asked for.
Jen Hatmaker wrote a book about fighting for grace. I haven’t read it. It seems like an oxymoron – like fighting for peace, which doesn’t seem to make sense until you look back at all of human history and see that all peace was hard-won and paid for in blood, tears, and loss.
Maybe what we need is a little more fight and a little more grace. Maybe it’s in the juxtaposition that we sense more clearly, like with bitter and sweet. In Come Matter Here, Hannah Brencher describes fight songs as reminders to keep going.
She writes: “I just hope you always know you deserve beautiful things. You deserve the chance to close chapters and write new endings and cry loud and not be sorry for whatever makes that wild heart of yours beat. (Fight Song #4).”
Here’s to reclaiming that wild heart and letting it beat, for the fight and for the grace.