Heirlooms - Part 3

What I learned from my mom about Grace

I don't even know how to start this. I've been thinking about this post for over a week now, and even as I sit down to write it, I don't know what I'm going to say.  Because the truth is, I can't think of too many things that I have learned about Grace that I didn't learn from my mom.

She struggled. With my dad's illness. With raising three ridiculous children. With loneliness, overwhelm, financial hardship. With losing both of her parents in her early 30s. With getting smacked in the face with metastatic cancer at 57.

But you had to look really closely to see any of the fissures wrought by all that struggle, because her day-to-day life was marked by a deep and quiet joy. There was always a song on her lips, a smile on her face, and something positive and optimistic coming out of her mouth. It was almost annoying.

I keep starting to write stories about the grace that poured out from mom while she was caring for my dad when he was ill, or about her life with cancer while God's luminous grace went right on beaming from within her. But I didn't like how it started to read like my mom's life was all about suffering and death.

It wasn't.

Her life was framed by singing. Ebullient, melodious singing. All. The. Time. Hymns, show tunes, Barbara Streisand, Simon and Garfunkel, Chorale numbers, The Carpenters.

And flowers. And parties. And friends. And signature dishes like vegetable pizza and dumples and 7-layer salad. She made jewelry and knitted blankets. She volunteered at her church. Took in my dad's parents when their house burned down and helped care for them until she needed care herself. And through all the pain and hard days and long nights, she was the most graceful person I have ever met. FULL of grace.

For my mom, "His Grace is sufficient" was more than a refrigerator magnet or a cross-stitch sampler. It was her breath.

I would just be rambling now if I kept typing. But I'll end with a quote from my favorite poet-theologian, Bono, that I think sums up what I learned from my mom about Grace:

Grace finds beauty in everything.