Grace, Defined

I love the idea of grace. To me it feels like a goodness, some love and kindness wrapped up in an essence that makes you glow. But while I've always thought of grace as being an important part of my being, I’ve never been sure how to actually define it.  

I wanted more clarity on this, so I looked up grace in the dictionary. Those definitions didn’t help clarify grace, either.  

- merited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification 

- a virtue coming from God
- a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace
- a suppleness of movement or bearing
- used as a title of address or reference 

I can do away with the “suppleness of movement” definition, though there are days when I seek that form of grace as well. I can also do away with the form of address, though I would welcome a “Good morning, your Grace” from time to time. And while I am a big supporter of the grace that comes from God, I do think it’s probably easy to be full of grace and to give grace when you are, well, God.

But for the rest of us humans, mucking around on the earth, where do we find our “merited divine assistance”? How do we enjoy a “divine state of sanctification” when there is work to do, schedules to maintain, children to raise, relationships to work on? 

As I continued to contemplate the idea of grace, the perfect vision of grace on earth presented itself to me. Vicky, a beautiful woman with a beautiful blog posted that she had been diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. Her posts took a dramatic shift from writing about motherhood and kid’s hockey games and warmth and family to writing about doctors appointments and MRIs and alternative therapies and the power of community.

And as she wrote about all of this, you can clearly hear Vicky’s faith - in God, in life, in the world. You can also hear the presence of grace. Because in her writing, in this journey, she is seeking an answer to this question:  

What is this experience asking of me?

And when I think of what it means to live with grace, I believe it all comes down to that one question: 

What is this experience asking of me?  

To live with grace means that we understand that everything in our lives has a reason. All the people, experiences, events are given to us so that we can learn and grow and understand the world and our place in it, even though we may not understand it - or like it - while it’s happening. 

In my quest for a definition of grace, I found an article on that appeared in Ode Magazine which said:

Grace accepts. It does not judge but allows. It allows because it does not fear or try to prevent the natural flow of life. It accepts that life is just life and doesn’t always make sense in the moment.

When we are graceful, we allow life to just be, and tend to feel happier because we are not fighting with our lives. We can relax and assume that everything will be made clear at the right time. We see that something going "wrong" is not indicative of our unworthy nature.

So the job that isn’t fulfilling is asking something of you. And the friendship that feels unsatisfying is asking something of you. And the feeling of accomplishment over mastering a new task is asking something of you. All of life, all of our experiences, all of our relationships are asking something of us. And when we live with grace, we live into the answers that get presented from simply living our lives.

Visit Vicky's blog to read more about her journey. And support her fight with a purchase of a bracelet.

This glorious photo was taken by friend and photographer Saul Blumenthal. See more of his great work at his website