timbre of grace

I am on my way out for a walk, pausing in the doorway to listen, one hand on the brassy knob, as Riley begins to read to her class online a thank you letter she has written to me.

And this is where I am today, standing not in the place of grace, because from the beginning, I’m thinking I don’t deserve a thank you, that I am unworthy of the blessing.

Dear Mom, I hope this note brings a smile to your face…

Of course I do stand smiling, for all my consumption with my own imperfection, listening as her voice wavers, a silly grin–joy—seeded and spreading recklessly wide across my face, a face that this morning feels heavy with a tired I’d like to shrug, because gracelessness just about makes a person more weary than any other thing, and we can all be especially ungracious.  That kind of entrapment wears a person down and out, wears a person who’s been born to wear a new self.

That she would hope for my smile, my wild awareness of grace, is also an expression of that same unmerited favor.  Suddenly I remember:  This letter of hers represents what it sounds like to speak in the timbre of grace, to sound as much like God as any human can, because I know what she’s saying to me is more about who she is and how she loves than it is about me.

It’s like the light has just come to me again, overwhelming the darkness.

And doesn’t it lately feel like we’re all living in the land of shadows?

I am halted in the doorway, unable to continue until I hear her out, because this morning, my pen skating across the page, I had come hungry and gathered up a morsel of this same grace, gobbling it like I’m starved, from my favorite Advent book.  Just this, coming to fill me as dawn broke:

God reaches for you who have fallen and scraped your heart raw, for you who feel the shame of words that have snaked off your tongue and poisoned corners of your life, for you who keep trying to cover up pain with perfectionism.

Light shining in my darkness.

It was like the words, written years ago, had been left there for me, still living, twinkling, like God’s words do, because I had sat in the quiet pause at the beginning of this day asking Him again to help me love Riley well, echoing in broader strokes a prayer I had made in hasty and weary dashes the night before, as one more oh and Mom than I could handle preceded one of Riley’s many questions.

Here is what you will know if you’ve spent any testing time with children, that we parents find the sharp edges of our own hearts and often fall right over them, unable to stop rushing headlong, our brokenness flailing.  This I had done last night, and I could not forgive myself.

Riley has a wonderful ability to communicate, especially about her curiosity, but because of challenges associated with her own experience of Autism, she prefers to form her sentences according to certain repetitive rules within which she finds a greater level of confidence.  Repeated phrases build a kind of verbal scaffolding beneath her feet, and so, she phrases questions all day long using the same basic verbal formula, always beginning with an oh and Mom, always waiting, sometimes beside me with folded hands and attentive gaze, for my responsive yes.

I know these things, and yet, I can feel so tired I think I will die if she says those words again to me, if she waits for me to say yes, one more time.

Last night, I had finally allowed my desperation, that convincing mortal groan, to leak into my yes so hard it sounded like no, had wanted her to hear what I had not had the energy even to discuss, or so I believed wholeheartedly, that is, please could this be the last question for a while?  Because I can’t I can’t I can’t.

She is still reading, by grace, her voice clearly not remembering who I really am.

But this is the thing the Advent star comes beaming, that grace has never been about who we are or how well we’ve done.  God comes reaching for me when I’ve skinned my own heart raw, not because I’ve already been who only He can remake me to be.  And Riley, well, she may be shackled by many things, but she’s free to love, so she doesn’t hold my sins against me.

Thank you so much for being there for me when I feel down and sad, she reads, and it seems like the me she knows is the me I’ve always wanted to be.  Having you there with me makes me a happier person.  I feel so blessed to have you in my life.  Thank you so much for always supporting me and loving me so well. 

I am gripping the door, silently saying to God, look who you’ve made her to be, how you’ve given her your own voice to speak.  This gratitude she expresses for me has all the marks of steadfast love, all the touch of God, who grants us, in the Christ-light, the freedom to see each other through His grace.

This, then, is a whole new way of seeing, a whole new way to talk to each other.

So, from now on, the apostle Paul once wrote, speaking in response to the good news of God’s grace, we regard no one from a worldly point of view.  He wrote this to the rough spiritual babes in the Corinthian church, the rebellious, sloppy, black sheep brothers and sisters, toward whom some have said he wrote with amazing grace, according to what grace gave him a heart to see about God in them, because grace says everything about God and nothing at all about us, except that we are loved.

Always, God loves Riley well, and sometimes, He does it through me.  And I am loved by God through her.

So I stand in the doorway now stunned by joy, asking God to filter my life, my vision, my voice, through His grace too, to help me recognize my freedom to respond through this lens of love, to set aside, as Riley does, any record of wrongs, not counting the sin of another soul against them, not wanting to, but wishing, as Jesus did, for pervasive forgiveness.

What if, I’m wondering, He would make us forgetful of each other’s faults, in favor of being conduits of His grace?  Could I write a thank you like this, a message of love, cultivating a forgiving ground that, separating transgressions as far as the east is from the west because of Him, just won’t let resentment take root?

Could I also be the radiance of His Advent, bursting right through the graceless darkness?

I am closing the door, getting in step, when I hear Riley’s teacher say, “I hope these letters will make their way to the people to whom you’ve written them.  I have a feeling they need to hear what these letters say.”

And I smile, because I’m already taking my letter with me, written right on my heart, as I head out the door into the world.