I say this a lot.

Grace.

We need to pass grace.

But sometimes, I say it with pain in my heart.

If anything has taught me more about grace… it's becoming a parent.

I'm not sure that I genuinely understood forgiveness and its complete process until working through the parenting journey.

I still am.

It's hard.

Hard to see that there are things I will need to be forgiven for. I will need to create healing space in my child's life and understand that there is no end to that cycle of needing to create space for a person and the grace to exist in the air between us.

Grace is a path I am walking and stumbling in again and again.

Sometimes it's a beautiful journey, and other times it becomes dark and full of thorns.

I can feel weary in the journey of forgiveness.

Yet, the idea of turning back, of not continuing on and finding that next part of healing, albeit alluring, is not a place I want to go.

We get frozen in time without the path.

We need the path.

It's just… hard.

Painful and not always a fun feeling.

And sometimes, I want to stamp my foot and decide to stay where I am.

I don't need to go any further.

But then…

I am raising this little spirit and the path is for her to learn as much as I.

If I can't pass grace for the pain within myself and exist with it, I can't give grace for the pain within others.

It's hard to look at.

It's not fun.

Yet,

it's a path.

A journey.

And thus far, the path has provided me more grace, more healing and more compassion than not being on the path.

So onwards we go.

Forever singing over each other.  'We are diamonds, rising up out of the dust'. 

The past month has been full of challenges.  I have been and still am processing the weight that comes with wanting to 'go through it', instead of around it.  How do I journey this healthy?  How do I use these broken pieces of me and others and stitch them into something that could be healing?

Amidst the pain, a new life is born.  Our best friends are now parents and everything that is raw, tender, new and reborn has happened.  They are absolutely beautiful in their newness and the love is expanding.  We get to open our arms to more of them.  More of who they are.  Our little is witnessing what 'new' truly is.  

Amidst the pain another best friend visits.  He brings with him that grace and peace that has been hard to anchor and we are again reminded that healing is not a solo job.  Healing is a collective agreement.  Healing is a raising up of eachother. 

I woke up the next morning after his visit with those song lyrics "You Make Me Brave" in my mind.  

We are called to embolden each other.  We are called to enter into each others pain and questions.  We are called to hash it out in the safety of acceptance of one another.  Without that safety, we cannot heal.  

I had so easily forgotten.

This was my calling too.  

Over any of the doubts I carry personally and professionally. 

That I seek to create a safe place for collective healing.  For myself.  For others.

& it's in that healing that courage and bravery is found. 

Tender moments with Uncle and this new little life.  

Inhale.  Exhale.

There is beauty in the breathing.  In the being still and letting the heart do it's work.  

Hearts.  We all beat and ache.  To live is to feel and to feel is to live.  

I have often found that when I listen to my heart beating, I want to be in the open air.  I want to feel the wind.  And wind is like stringed instruments that match our beats.  Calling us into something deeper.  

In the past, when my heart ached in ways I couldn't fathom, I would drive to the ocean.  
I would scream the guttural depths of myself into the air.  I would lose my breath.  

And now, as the aches come and go, I find I am left wanting to whisper.  
The heavens can hear our ache before it has been uttered.  

I trust that as we breathe that the Heart will do it's work.  
I'll trust we'll thrive.

Inhale.  Exhale.

Easter Weekend.

For me, Easter is a time to reflect on why Grace and Love is so important.  I take my faith intentionally, and the practice of Communion is more than just drinking a sip of fruit juice or wine and chewing a cracker like its a habit.  The true practice of Communion is the practice of Grace and Love every single day.

We need to be passing Grace like we pass the bread.  Passing Love like we pass the wine.   Because we are always close to either communing with Gods people at the table or critiquing Gods people.  And that critiquing?  That critiquing spills the wine through the cracks of the table, onto the floor where we miss out.  We miss out on passing and receiving and end up getting lost in what could have been a beautiful Grace Communion.

We break the bread and drink the wine because of Love.  Because of Grace.

Self Care: Bath Time

Self-care isn't just for the single young twenty somethings who are still in university with student loans to coast on.  Self-care isn't just for the yogis and the wellness coaches.  Self care is for the every person.

The every you and me.

Self care is a bit of honesty.

For me?

Right now, it's lighting a candle in the shower/bath.  A simple reminder that my quiet time is worth a bit of ceremonial due diligence.   It's reminding myself that my dreams matter, I have worthiness to share and that feeling responsible for everyones happiness does not mean that I truly am.

In truth, I doubt my dreams validity, I feel unworthy on what I have to share and feel utterly responsible that those in my life are happy with me and how I do my life.

But Grace.

When we allow some Grace into our lives, it's like that candle I light.  It's quiet, small and peaceful.  Its the peace I am missing when I am busy trying to solve my problems as if I could truly fix it.  Peace can't come while you toss and turn.  Peace comes when you forgive yourself of what you believed you could control and let yourself off the hook.  Peace comes when you start to understand that your worthiness doesn't come from anyone or anything, but from the very being you were made to be.  You are a delight as you are wholly and completely you.  With every flaw and beauty mark.  You were made to be complex and intricate and when we allow ourselves to be as complicated, messy and as whole as we are, there is the Grace that we often forget.  We forgot it one day in our insecurities and our doubts , but it's always been there.  Waiting for us to allow it in again.  And when we do?

Peace.

Light candles, play a song, nap under a luxurious blanket, indulge in a heavenly moment.

©2014 Jeremy Lai

I choose Grace again and again.  It's inescapable.  Not only because it is my middle name but because it is the call on this world.  It is the concept we all are living under if we only just grabbed the keys that hang around our necks.  We all have grace keys.  We all have grace moments and we all have the ability to pass on a grace key to someone else.

I freely talk about that time I did the unthinkable.  That time that swept me off my feet and made me think I was made out of heart break and endless pain.  Comments were made from sideliners, from the grace-holders who kept it hidden in fists instead of in open palms, and I was trashed.  I wasn't worth the risk or the comments of nothing more than disgust.  I was that bride who chose to throw the veil in the trash can because I couldn't fathom a way out.  So I torched a union for something that glittered gold in moments.  And the glitter moments, they were real and messed up, because that is how it is with people who are lost...they make unions in pain and they connect over loss and emotions run ragged from running.  

Running from Grace.

Everyone was running from Grace.

Everyone around that scene were grace-key-holders, stuffing them in the deepest pockets they could find because they couldn't comprehend how passing a key to three messed up spirits could solve the mystery they couldn't relate to.

And when it was all said and done and everyone was in their corners of destructed love and lies .... it was all just a hopeless mess.

But something happens in the hopeless.  Grace-keys shine , and those who can get over the egos, the pain, the denial and the rift of people trashing, they grasp the key and hold it out...they would rather pass on grace then let anymore of this continue.

And I tell you this, because this Canadian-Church raised girl in a generation of God-Isn't-Real, found more in a Grace that is gifted than in the solutions of this world.

I tell you this because I am watching all these broken stories and I want to hold my key high and shout Grace at the sky.  I want to cry with the hearts rather than ignore them.  I want to gather the men and women who found solace in each other, broke one another and tell them I understand.  That Grace understands.  That there isn't a messed up moment that couldn't be redeemed.  I want to tell them that I have seen miracles and I have seen new life come out of the cemetery of my dead one.

I want to sing and dance Grace all over these hearts because they need it, they will thrive in it, and I know that my Grace giving God has more in store than just blood and a cross.  There is everything fresh and renewed and that show,  it is not sold out, because it is yours and you are the honoured guest to a Grace-Event made just for you. 

So stop withholding Grace from each other, because that cheating wife, and that sneaking man, and that desperate husband just needed Gods Grace.  

I was that wife, and I couldn't have remarried a husband and found a whole new life if it wasn't for the messed up wedding and the  Grace that was given to me.

Give Grace like you would give water to a thirsty man.  Give grace even when the betrayal is deep and the circumstances bloody.  

Give Grace because the alternative is a war within your spirit that you will never overcome.

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The key I am wearing is from  http://www.thegivingkeys.com where keys are made, bought and given.  Read their story http://www.thegivingkeys.com/pages/about-us 

I will be giving this key away this season to someone who needs Grace ... which is all of us.