First of all, what is grace? Grace has been defined as “the divine influence (love those words) which operates in humans to regenerate and sanctify, to inspire virtuous impulses, and to impart strength to endure trial and resist temptation.”
I knew as I laid reclined in my chair at the end of March of this year, my body was feeling badly beaten up as a result of stress of no physical energy, worry of “what if this doesn’t end”, fear of “why can’t we diagnose the problems with my body” and grief of losing my father of COVID, and a lack of hormones (nature’s way of making us ladies no longer fertile) as menopause was having it’s way with me. I laid there in that chair not wanting to move and debating whether I should take time off of work for at least 30 days to rebuild myself. A question I never had to ever ponder in my entire adult life. The thought that came to my mind that day was “have grace for yourself and your body”.
Taking grace for oneself takes courage. It involves standing in your shoes and holding your head high for you regardless of what others will think. We often suffer from a false perception that if we don’t behave a certain way that somehow the people in our lives will be impacted negatively and then what? In the recovery world we call this suffering from the god complex. As if I’m so powerful to impact others lives to the point of detriment. We all sign up for the roles we play. Yet, to place a hold on my life to heal was a hard decision to make. Why? Because it felt like I was wimping out, or I should be stronger than this. My body however was physically disagreeing with my mind. My body was screaming at me to slow down and heal. I wrestled with my decision to take time off for that entire weekend. Then on Monday I told my employer I was going to take time off work.
A hint however is this, if you are spending time being miserable with the same situation over and over it might be time to pause and make a new decision, give yourself some space and grace. If your body is breaking down and you have refused to take time off to heal you might be putting yourself, your grace on hold thinking it will get better. Which it might, but at what cost? How painful does it need to be?
A few questions for you today, is there an area in your life where you could use a regeneration? Maybe its in your health – which is my story – the health scares impacted my thinking, feelings, and emotions. Or perhaps it is in relationships? Are you jumping from one relationship to another? Grace and space might be the tool in allowing you to heal from the first relationship that caused that tailspin in the first place. Maybe allowing grace for your self will help you take the dagger out of your back that you continue to push in because your inner talk is you feel overwhelmed, not doing enough, etc.
Once the grace is allowed and experienced, the next awareness will be when should I expect more from myself? Does grace have a timeline? Is it 30 days? Is it only the vacation time I took? Is it when my medical leave runs out? Or my medical benefits? Well, your grace timeline is where the growth is for you.
For me, it was when should I be working again? Upon returning to work they decided to cut my salary by 35k and take away my title. WOW! To which I gave myself a whole bunch of grace and politely declined their offer – after 20 years of working for them. So, when I was sharing with my therapist that I was feeling like a loser, not contributing to my household finances, worried about my partners feelings…..she simply stated my timeline for grace seems to be limited.
At which point, I awakened. THERE IS NO TIME LIMIT ON GRACE, it is there for the giving, all I need to do is allow the receiving of grace for myself and others! When I consistently do this, life is good, I am good.
Enjoy the journey, you are worth it!
