The Little Graces

Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.

I’ve written on more than one occasion about “signal graces,” those little moments when you strongly feel God’s presence in your life.  Sometimes they come in the form of “answered prayers,” but more often than not, they are gifts God gives you that you didn’t know you needed.

For me, it may be the random book I open to find words that spark something I need to write or just something I need to hear. Sometimes it’s the five added minutes caused by traffic that allow me to hear the song on the radio that moves me to tears. Once it was the decision to head for the forest preserve instead of the thrift store while waiting for the end of my son's music lesson.  The choice resulted in discovering a small inlet with a hundred geese on the water and an opportunity to take some amazing and completely unexpected photographs. Each of these moments is pure grace, prayers answered, known and unknown.

Here’s a snippet of the grace I found today. It spoke to my need. Maybe it will speak to yours, as well.

We cannot be what we are not. We can only become the whole of what we are, and learn to accept it, and learn to enjoy being it.

One thing we can do is to begin to go about life differently. Life is not one thing only. No one’s life is totally one-dimensional. We are all a great deal more than the world knows us to be. So when one dimension of life fails to work for us, we can take all of who we are and become what we must some other way. 

We can learn how to treat ourselves with the respect we are struggling to get from others. We ourselves must accept what we are if we want other people to value it, too. Instead of trying to be what we are not, we must become the best, the happiest, of what we are. People are attracted to happiness, not to anger or disdain or resentment or negativity or jealousy. 

It is the ability to spread happiness that moves the world, that gives a person scope, that makes a person desirable, that unsticks me from the obsession on which I’m stuck.
~from Welcome to the Wisdom of the World by Joan Chittister

Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.