Amazing Grace

lost and found

by Jeneen R. Garcia

to be published on 24 November 2007

 

SOME THINGS COME without being called. Like cats. And love letters. Or, happily, a precious poem writing itself in the middle of a crazy, hectic week.

 

This past year opportunities have been dropping onto my lap, unexpected—people who turned out to be the very ones I needed to meet at just the right time, trips to the remotest places I’d always dreamed of going to, but never thought I’d reach for lack of funds and logistics. Opportunities, too, for sources of income, at the times my own funds were running low. Certainly nothing short of miraculous for somebody unemployed and studying full-time.

 

It’s been Murphy’s Law turned upside down. Everywhere I turn, things fall neatly into place. It’s perhaps what they say about all things working together for good for those who love God, or the universe conspiring, the fates converging.

 

To what do I owe this seeming reversal in fortune?

 

I haven’t made any drastic lifestyle changes that would make me a candidate for sainthood. For sure, I haven’t signed any deals with the devil, nor stocked up on good luck charms. In fact, the most remarkable thing I’ve probably done so far is to realize that I deserve none of this.

 

How else do I explain it to my brother who cannot believe that, while he slaves away in an office he does not like, I get paid for diving for a whole month in some of the best reefs across the country just by emailing a few people? How else do I accept as real the wonderful people I did not seek out, who love me as dearly as their dearest? How, knowing all the things I know about myself, could I claim that a swim in the warm sea at sunset on a Monday, as a light rain falls, is something that I am entitled to?

 

Grace, defined by theologians as the unmerited favor of God, goes against everything we’ve ever learned about reward and punishment, no-work-no-pay, karma, and all the other laws that say for every action is an equal and opposite reaction, what goes up must come down. Grace says, Ask and ye shall receive. No payback, no fine print. Its very nature is that it’s there for the taking—but only for those who see the gift for what it is.

 

Most times, we miss out on grace because we can’t believe we could ever possess something we did not suffer or work for. We pride ourselves on our abilities, our goodness, our “likeableness” perhaps, forgetting that gifts say more about the giver than the receiver. The world offers up its abundance every day, freely, for anyone to partake of. But we see only a tiny bit of it—if at all—because we choose which gifts we receive by measuring the things we have done to “deserve” them.

 

How arrogant of us to think that the insignificant little we do would actually count for something, would buy us love or happiness in a universe that runs perfectly smoothly without our help! If only we learn to comprehend the generosity of the Giver, we would graciously accept grace upon grace with as much gratitude and humility as we do life’s bittersweet aches. Graciousness, especially, to receive the things we do not think to ask for, but are nevertheless granted to us exactly when we need them.

 

All that is required of us is faith. Faith that we WILL find happiness and love and everything good we’ve ever wanted, not because we’ve done anything to deserve them, but because grace flows infinitely for those who trust and wait.

 

We create our own realities; we only get as much as we dare to hope. We see as much joy in our life as we believe is possible for us to have. Pain and disappointment, of course, are part of the natural order of things. But just because they exist doesn’t mean that extremely, amazingly good things can’t happen to us, that we can’t have happily ever after.

 

It would seem that just when I’ve turned a year older, I’ve begun to believe in fairy tales. Defying the laws of Murphy and gravity, I float on the hope, humbled and grateful, that the best is yet to come—just for the asking.

 

For Jemi, who can have her cake, and eat it, too, on our 28^th year and beyond