Tag: grace

The Grace of the Present

I’m not opposed to making memories.  As an introvert, I spend a decent amount of time inside my own head, thinking over what has or will transpire.  However, the other day I was scrolling through Facebook and I was seeing pictures and albums that were presented as “making memories.”  Do we prefer to make memories rather than live in the present moment?

Is something off if we spend a large amount of our time documenting for the future moments of the past?  Could it be that the present is not actually as great as we will remember it to be once it is firmly grounded in the past?

I’m sporadically reading One Thousand Gifts and the other day I read about how Ann Voskamp, the author, was struggling to encounter God’s face in the moments where she is stressed and angry.  Seeing God’s face in the brilliance of the morning sunrise or the contented cooing of a newborn is easy.  Yet it stretches us to see God’s face in a belligerent student or a quarrel with a friend.  As I read, I thought of how just that day I had been annoyed with my students not listening to my directions.  It never even crossed my mind to stop and consider, “How are they revealing God’s face to me right now?”

The present moment is the place where we encounter God.

We are making strides when we are able to go back to a difficult situation and see how God was present in that moment.  Yet it is supremely better to be able to, in that very moment, see the face of God present.  If only I could look at my students, complaining and upset about their work, and see Christ in them.  It would take re-training my mind and my heart.

In One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp reveals an experience she had with her son that changed them both.  At one point in the conversation, she tells her son that the only way to combat feelings is to have other feelings.  The central feeling we can use to combat unwelcome feelings, she presents, is gratitude.  In the midst of frustration, fatigue, anger, sadness, or annoyance, what a difference it would make if we would begin to be thankful.  Not gratitude for something of the past or the future, but gratitude for that present moment.  What would it be like if in our most trying moments we saw the face of God in His perennial presence?  Surely it would change things.

If we spend our lives trying to simply “make memories,” I fear that the best moments of life will not be what we actually experience, but always events of the past.  I run the risk of sabotaging my present for the glorification of a past that never really existed.

When I look at my semester that I spent studying abroad, I don’t initially recall the tiredness, the inevitable frustrations of group planning, or the desire for American comforts.  Yet those were very real aspects of my semester.  I cannot expect my present moment to measure up to my idealized past experiences.

God is present in the here and now.  In this moment, despite the commonness.  In my quiet study hall on a random Wednesday.  In the lukewarm coffee I’m still enjoying from this morning.  In the satisfaction of checking another item off my to-do list.

This present moment is a moment of grace.  Because grace is only offered in the present.

I desire to teach myself to accept each moment as the grace-filled, soul-transforming, heart-deepening, wound-healing, saint-making, God-given moment that it is.  This present moment is where we encounter God.  Let us not overlook His presence in the now in an effort to live in the past.

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Perhaps my saving grace

Even though I no longer have my beautiful 7th period Scripture class from last year, I think they may be my saving grace this year.  I’m not ruling out falling in love with all of my classes this year (although, admittedly, I think I have discovered on the first day the class that will be the most difficult to love), but with my students from last year, there is no need to win their approval–I already have it.  One of them stopped by twice today, pretending he was in my class again this year.  Two stood in my doorway after school to ask about my summer and told me they planned to say “hi” everyday after school.  I’ve seen a few in the halls and many have greeted me with big smiles.

I’m human.  I enjoy being liked and accepted for who I am.  As I start the process of learning the dynamics of new classes and new students, I am enjoying the chance to still bask in the glories of my hard work from last year.  The Lord truly blessed me and is continuing to show me those blessings.  The Lord must know I will need that grace for this upcoming year.

Independence and Surrender

Our entire lives seem to be a battle between independence and surrender.  We seek independence at an early age and relish it for much of our lives.  My two year old niece enjoys the freedom of saying “no” and running where she wants, when she wants.  My nephews want to help with chores and frequently refuse help for themselves, instead wanting to demonstrate their ability to do it on their own.  As adults, we are quick to forget there is any uniqueness in driving where we want, buying what we want, and living how we want.

Age or misfortune catches up to us and we soon find ourselves losing our independence.  We can fight this inevitable fate, but it will only breed bitterness and malcontent.  Eventually, we must surrender.  In the spiritual life, we can learn this gift of surrender earlier.  Relinquishing control of our lives, realizing that we are not the ones in control or willing our own existence, can prepare us for the gradual physical surrender that must happen.

My grandparents are aging and I see the fighting that takes place within them.  I do not blame their desire to grasp their dwindling freedom or to express frustration at a body that is now turning against them.  The simple freedoms are gradually slipping away–no walking around the block, no trips to the grocery store, no single bed for them to share.  The task of getting ready for bed, something so mundane one often forgets it, is now one that requires help.  Waiting outside their bedroom as they were ushered to bed, I thought of how someday that will be me, helping my parents.  And perhaps someday it will be me, being helped to bed.  Inwardly, I rebel at the thought.  I think that I will break the mold, I will not need the help, I will do it on my own.

When visiting them, I can sense the mounting frustration.  There seems to be both a desire to return to health and a desire to die.  My grandparents have not aged prematurely.  In their late 80s-early 90s, they are as fit as one might expect them to be.  Thankfully, they are ill in body but, apart from a little confusion, sound in mind.  I wonder what to say—do I speak of suffering?  Do I remind them to be thankful of their blessings?  Do I try to lighten the mood?  Mostly, I just listen.  I listen to my grandpa tell me about the picture of grandma now on the piano.  He says he wanted it there because that is how she looked when they met.  Her beauty floored him.  I listen to my grandma talk about one of my many cousins.  Her life for so many years has been about others, even now she finds it difficult to draw conversation to herself.  I listen to my grandpa’s worries and fears.  I listen to my grandma attempt to follow my mom around the kitchen, asking what she needs help with and telling her what to do.

While age has forced my grandparents to lose independence, illness can do the same for others far younger.  I have a friend from college who has been battling a debilitating illness for the last three years.  It causes her intelligent brain to rebel against reading more than a few lines at a time and forces her marathon trained body to be weak and unpredictable.  I refuse to canonize her yet, but I have witnessed the beauty of her striving to surrender herself to God in His inscrutable plan.  Such a situation could easily lead to depression and bitterness, but she is fighting the good fight, ironically by striving to lay down her arms.

How do we surrender?  It is a choice.  We can see physically our limitations.  I can really want to do something yet find myself incapable.  The spiritual limitations are less clear.  With those, we can fool ourselves into thinking they aren’t there or that we have surrendered, simply by virtue of thinking the words once or twice.

In surrendering, we choose to not manipulate the situation, we choose to not be in control.  After years of being told that we can do it and that we are the ones running our lives, it is counter-cultural to step back and release control.  I can drive myself anywhere I want, I can eat whatever food I want, and I can spend my time as I choose.  But I do not will my heart to keep beating, I cannot control the replication of my cells, and I am powerless in making myself continue to exist.  For all the little things I doggedly control, I am incapable of controlling all the major aspects of my life.  Accepting God’s authority in my life is central to becoming the saint He desires me to be.

Lord, help us to surrender, to admit with our lives that we are not the ones in control.  In our inmost being we desire to belong to You and to give ourselves over to You.  Grant us the grace to do so.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  John 21: 18