grace...a gift

My journal , blue and green, awaits while I settle in. It is cool enough for socks and after a sweltering few weeks, I am so, dare I say, grateful. The word for this day was given before I got out of bed. Just one word for me to dig around in my roots for something to flesh out. Grace. And from my childhood this comes to mind; unearned, undeserved, subtle like the breeze, a gift from God. I look it up and I am correct. Amazing, what stays in the memory.

But first there is Grace, Gracie, a friend's child. I met her when she was an infant at a road race. I held her and tears were on her checks, it was so cold . But there it was, that smile. Always that bounteous gift of her smile. She is a special girl, indomitable. When I hear her laugh with her Dad at some joke between them, I hear bells ringing. She, who is now 12, wasn't at the last gathering, she had cheer leading practice and I missed her.The gift of her, that smile.

The first and only time I saw Melania Trump walk any distance, I saw grace again, a way of walking that is more like floating. She, a trained model, brought something very special to the path she was on.You had to see it to get it.

Grace is quiet when it comes and we may only recognize when we look back. A decision I made that kept my family together, turning from the easy path. I see now how much grace, God's strength , was needed. In the Catechism, the definition states that that grace is a gift that helps us to live the life as a Child Of God, bending our will to His. The right path.

One more story of grace. He was an American professor, an atheist, on holiday in Paris when he was struck with an illness. As he lay on a gurney in a hallway, he died. His journey to the next place was agonizing. He felt he was being dragged away by dark, mournful creatures to a frightful place. A voice he heard keep saying, pray, pray, and he could only conjurer up the words:"Our Father." As he said those words, the darkness began to lift and he was heading toward light when he came back in the hospital.

I see that last whispering moments as the voice of grace. Mercy, one last chance to know who God is. The book is "Descent Into Death"  and the author is Harold Storm, now an ordained minister. I saw him interviewed and 30 years later, he still weeps when he tells his story.

We rarely think gratefully of grace, that unearned gift that help us to be better than we are, stronger, wiser, committed to the path we are on. So like a breeze, a loving touch, a child's smile.

                                                            A Celtic Hymn

                                                         Be Thou my vision
                                                         O Lord of my heart
                                                      Naught be all else to me
                                                           save that Thou art
                                                      Thou my best thought
                                                   in the day and the night,
                                                           Waking or sleeping
                                                        the presence my light.