Love, CharenLeigh

What is grace? Where did the word originate? Is grace used for only religious purposes?

Grace for me may be different than grace for you, and even more different for the person sitting near you.

Grace is not something that is learned by reciting a biblical verse, reading a spiritual or “self-help” book. Grace is something that comes from experiences; from making mistakes, realizing your mistakes and making better choices the next time.

I’ve been on a journey about/for grace for probably two years now. If you’re a social media follower of mine you’ve seen that I post a lot about learning grace, giving grace, finding grace, and seeing grace in my life. I’ve done this sporadically for the last few years. I hoped it would be like learning a subject in nursing school, you studied, you memorized, you took the test, and you’ve got it. No way Jose! It was not until I learned exactly what grace was in my life till I had to give myself grace, then grace to someone who was not “sorry”.

Now let’s back up before story time.

What is grace?

As for the above video, you can see that grace is a million different things with a million different perspectives. But basically to me; grace means to give someone the benefit of the doubt, to not play a victim mindset, and just treat someone like you would want to be treated when the tables are turned.

I want to say story time, but it’s not necessarily about one story or circumstance. It’s plenty of happenings that came about in my life that made me realize exactly what grace is. Hopefully everyone can relate to this at some point in their life.

1. A close friend did not invite you out to dinner with the rest of you two’s friends. Wheww. Yes mine and your feelings are hurt and you feel forgotten about. But give grace; maybe they thought your work schedule was different, maybe they knew you needed a social break, maybe they truly forgot due to lack of communication between the both of you over the last few weeks.

2. Your partner or significant other is “ignoring” you. If you know me, this is one of my biggest triggers for a “freak out”. But give grace, yea a text would be simple but what if they have had such a horrible day they cannot conjure up the energy to communicate. I know we’ve all been there. Honestly maybe they just needed a break from people all around, no hard feelings to you, but they needed a 12hour break.

3. A forgotten birthday, we all have people in the back of our heads we look for to send us birthday messages. I’ve been guilty myself about letting the day slip away. I know it hurts our feelings to think they “forgot” but give grace. Maybe their day was so consuming they didn’t check their social media, calendar, or phone that whole day. They knew the get together was this weekend but the days during the week was enclosed with so much to get done beforehand it truly could of slipped through the chaos of their busy mind.

4. Your dog has shit, literally shit all over your freshly washed carpet. If you’ve got pets, you know it’s happened at least once. Well for me nothing pushes my buttons like that. My poor Cam knows it too. I walk in the door and he hides. He knows he messed up. I want to rub his nose in it, beat him, and force him outside for hours. But give grace; he just could not hold it anymore mom. He didn’t get a chance to go outside before your work or class that day because you were late and 12 hours is a long time to hold your bowels when you’ve been asleep all night with mom.

5. You’re in a fast food drive through that you’ve waiting an ample amount of time in, you pay, get your order, and it’s all f*cked up. Give grace, could be the persons first day on the job, they could of lost a family member that day and just could not concentrate or their management was harping in their ear.

We truly never know what someone goes through. We never know if someone is on their last leg. They could be at their breaking point, but YOU GAVE GRACE.

One more thing before I go; learning to give others grace felt easy over time. But learning to give myself grace was the hardest. No one is harder on themselves but themselves. Mistakes are a natural human thing, everyone makes them. And if you don’t make mistakes goodness gracious please teach me the trick. But I learned that once you truly learn yourself and love yourself you will start treating yourself like you would anyone else, with grace.

There are days that go by that I’m like “Why did I do that?”, “If you knew better Charen you’d do better.” That is when I remind myself that I’m always a work in progress. I’m always trying to do better and be better. Give yourself the grace to make those mistakes. It’ll make you a better person and there is no better way to learn something than by getting it wrong the first or even second time around.