The events from the past two months have been remarkably out of the ordinary. Before Thanksgiving, I got COVID (after dodging any cold or flu for 2 and a half years). After Thanksgiving, my spouse got COVID. A week later, he gets another respiratory virus. Our Christmas schedule was overly busy. Right before the New Year, my mother-in-law passes away and we have to quickly make arrangements for travel and cat sitting. Then my family has an unexpected quick and weird reunion of sorts after many years of estrangement. 

Frankly, I need respite. And this weekend, we’re finally back to our regularly scheduled program, which includes writing all this down.

The other thing worth mentioning is that throughout this time, I experienced and noticed a lot of genuine kindness from neighbors, relatives, colleagues, health workers, hotel workers, and random strangers along the way.

I say notice because (and don’t cry for me Argentina) I don’t pick up on easily when kindness comes my way. I pray and spend most of my day, believing that there are very few truly bad people in the world, just bad actions. But at some point in time in life, it was baked into me a sense that there’s a line around the block of folks just waiting to commit an act of unkindness toward me. People have certainly done their share. And let’s face it, in the great history book of my life, I have too.

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A relative used to say to me all the time, “I forgive. But I never forget.” One, when I still talk to them these days, I don’t get the sense that they forgive anyone. Two, I wonder can you really forgive but not forget?

I forgot a lot of things. But when I recount the stories that I remember of bad things done and said to me, it doesn’t feel like I’m forgiving. It’s not a sense of revenge, or wanting retribution, or that I want to inflict the same pain back. Sometimes, it would be nice to have had an acknowledgement, some empathy or an apology.

But mostly I feel a need to have justice. But I don’t know what having that sense means. So I looked up the etymology of the word justice and found that it comes from the Latin, iustitia which means “righteousness or equity”.

That makes perfect sense. When I remember bad stuff, in my mind I go back in time, and think about how to balance it out _ between today and yesterday, between right and wrong, and I think, how much more time do I want to spend on these memories? And am I really restoring any balance in my life? Or am I perpetuating a continued lack of balance?

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Many moons ago, I learned several exercises from a trainer using an upside down bosu ball including while standing on it. Essentially it’s like standing on a flat surface that has a balloon attached to the bottom of it. It is not stable nor sustainable in that you cannot live all day on it.

While standing on it, you have to work very hard to stay balanced. You’re fighting against nature _ gravity, fluctuations in the air around you, the amount of oxygen and blood flowing to your muscles, and staying mentally focused. Eventually you will tip and one side will take over and throw you off balance. 

And that is what life is like. No matter how strong, mentally attuned, physically coordinated, planned out you are, eventually there will be disruption to the balance that you strive so hard to maintain.

This then begs the question, is balance perhaps a great big lie. Biblically, it may be a trick by Satan and his cohorts to make us think we can control everything, and when we can’t it’s someone’s else’s fault. It’s the fault of our parents, it’s our neighbors, it’s our work colleagues, it’s our politicians, it’s maybe even ourselves. Or worse, it’s God’s fault and we think that God wants us to have miserable lives. I don’t go that far. But some folks do blame God and that’s a shame.

I could dive into that notion farther. But I think that Nadia Bolz-Weber, a pastor whose writings and sermons I admire, said it well in her Jan 6, 2023 sermon and post, “Enjoy Your Forgiveness”

“It is not God, but the devil who rummages through our garbage looking for already forgiven sins to rub our noses in to say “this is who you really are”.

But in Christ, who they [everyone you know] really are, is forgiven and who you really are is forgiven.  And I’m so sorry to be the one to say it, but so is everyone you resent.  Which at first sounds awful. But to know that in the kingdom of God there is pardon for you and for me and for everyone who has ever hurt us is true freedom…because we can just stop thinking an eye for an eye is going to help us, we are free to stop re-litigating decades old crimes of our siblings and our parents, we are free to stop beating ourselves and everyone else up for stuff in the past.”

Exactly.

God doesn’t want us to have miserable lives. He wants us to be free to choose. He wants us to recognize that life is complicated and always will be. And that it is complicated not just for you, but for EVERYONE. And you cannot control everything. And neither can everyone else. And your best choice is grace. Grace for yourself, and everyone.

Paul in his letter to the Ephesians spoke of grace that God has for us even in the face of our own transgressions. “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (2:4-5)

And that’s how it feels after a couple of months of hardship. That God and a lot of people gave me their grace. And it took this concentrated amount of time to see there is not a line around the block of folks just waiting to commit an act of unkindness toward me. (Well, maybe a few.) 

But still, it’s not my job to be their judge and jury. Conversely, it’s not my job to just give up and let people treat me poorly because they want to. 

I can choose to give it the time and space in my life that it deserves, and truly forgive and forget. I can forget about achieving balance on the great upside down bosu ball of life and instead give grace. 

I want to be granted grace. I want what grace offers _ space to be me, to be heard, to be understood. Grace is not a get-out-of-jail free card. Wrongful acts are wrong and they are going to happen, and we can deal with them with grace. Not resentment, not bitterness, not revenge, not an eye-for-eye. 

So I want to give grace. Because when you give grace, in the same way that others and God have given you grace, the scales of justice are truly aligned. So forget balance and embrace grace.

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*Inspired by Tish Harrison Warren’s NY Times article, January 1, 2023, “New Year’s habits that are good for the soul”. “Last year I asked writers, scholars and spiritual leaders to suggest resolutions that weren’t focused on sculpting a beach body or maximizing one’s earning capacity but were instead practical ways to nourish one’s soul or the “soul” of our society.” and she received this quote from Nii Addy, neuroscientist, associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University and host of the “Addy Hour” podcast.