D. None of the Above?

In which the right answer appears.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

— Anne Lamott

I did something stupid recently.

Well, I’ve probably done at least several stupid things recently, but engaging in a fight with strangers on Facebook is a whole different level of pointless.

The thing is, I was exhausted. I work for a large, struggling, criminally underfunded school district, and I don’t need to tell you - unless you’ve been living under a rock - why that might feel especially apocalyptic and hellish these days (even though I really love my job). And so, when the feed of a (wonderful) friend, who also happens to be an education advocate in the county where I live, started filling up with people complaining to high heaven about the county’s schools and the school administration, I kinda lost it. 

In my defense, I didn’t lose it in a trollish way. (I’m not there…yet.) I just pointed out that every single person I know who works for a public school system is running on fumes, running on empty, trying to just make it through the present crisis, and we’re all doing our level best even if we screw up sometimes, and working way out in front of the research, which means without a net, which is necessary because this stupid virus changes faster than the scientists can track it, and that there are No. Right. Answers. Not one. There is not one single choice school leaders can make at this point that won’t piss off some loud constituency, that won’t cause blowback, that won’t hurt some group somewhere. The district I work for, admittedly, has done a far better job of responding to this almost-two-year crisis than the better-funded, more privileged district where my children attend school and where the Facebook feeding frenzy was focused, but my point was and is this: The only way we are all going to get through this is if we give each other a little grace, or a lot; if we take a deep breath and calm the hell down; and if we recognize that every agonizing choice we are making for our own families, the folks at the helm are making for tens of thousands of families, who range from rich to poor and from privileged to terribly underserved, and who come from a mile-wide spectrum of backgrounds and communities. 

So, grace. That’s what I said we need and I stand by it. I was excoriated of course, mostly by the “but what about meeeeeee” contingent, but I solved that problem by blithely ignoring the responses to me. Because if the idea of giving a little grace is enough to send someone into paroxysms of rage, well then, they are beyond saving.

I am not a hypocrite, or at least I try not to be, so if I’m going to preach grace, then it seems at least reasonably important that I practice it. Those of you who know me IRL know that I can tend towards impatience (that is a charitable interpretation, but this is my space, so I get to be nice to myself), and that sometimes my inner Eeyore comes out and I turn into a grouch, a misanthrope, without a whole lot of grace to spread around. But I do strive to do better. Most of the time.

Now I cannot say I am big on New Year’s resolutions, given that all the experts say they are mostly for naught, but I believe that we can stop and take stock if we want to, that we can pivot in a moment of truth, and that change is possible, even if it sometimes feels like one step forward two steps back.

And because my birthday falls in January, I get a double reason at the start of the year to try to reset and reorient in ways that matter. (These Significant Events are arbitrary reasons to do anything - being really just the byproducts of history and calendar chance - but given that life is pretty much a wild dance on the head of the pin of arbitrary chances, I am going to just accept that this is how things are, and move on.) I didn’t actually bring this intention into my birthday, but here I am typing this essay at 11pm on the Big Day, and things seem to have worked in my favor, so who am I am to fight enlightenment?

What I mean is that I had a wonderful birthday, and that was not really an accident. I have found myself in recent years unable to focus enough on my blessings, for agonizing about the things gone wrong, and it makes me feel narrow and small, and entirely graceless. Today though, for reasons I cannot quite discern but that I’m also grateful for, I found myself thrilling to the happinesses that were coming my way, and not particularly bothered by the annoyances.

All day my heart was full. My phone buzzed constantly with well wishes, and my Facebook feed was a bright stripe of Happy Birthday posts. I found gifts from friends and my sister on my doorstep, had a beautiful walk with my dear friend (my sister from another mister), received a perfect gift from my girls and beautiful cards from them that made me actually weep with joy, celebrated on FaceTime with another beloved friend whose kids get along brilliantly with my kids, and just felt loved the whole day through. 

Vee took a day off from her tween snark, and ohhhh, my heart

Was it perfect? No. There were a few people who I wished had reached out who were silent. But these few folks registered only as pinpricks of unpleasantness, rather than as storm clouds raining on the day, and - even better - I dug deep to find the grace to understand that we all have our reasons for what we do and don’t do, most of which are neither evil nor even intentional. Also, it has been such a hard slog, for so long, for so many. And all I have to do now is look down at the tattoo on my arm to remember the words of Mary Oliver: “And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in this world.” When I remember those words, it makes the slights and thoughtlessness of others that much easier to bear.

It feels good to seek grace, and spread it around. That’s not me trying to virtue signal, and lord knows I’ve fallen on my face in this regard more times than I can count. It’s just that in a time when every single option for school, for work, for how we live, feels like the wrong answer, circled in glaring red, I’m coming to realize that hidden beyond all that pain and grief is an answer that asks something of us, yes, but gives so much back. What more could we possibly ask for, than that? What could be more necessary, right here and right now, than grace?