Accept Grace

It can be hard to accept grace. While many Divas are excellent at extending grace to other people – from overly stressed-out co-workers to children who have forgotten that oh, yes TODAY is the day they are supposed to come to school dressed as President Van Buren, complete with out-of-control whiskers – we are often not very good at accepting grace being extended to us. As a result, we whirl around and begin to burn out. It doesn’t need to be that way.

All of us are deserving of compassion – and that includes us! So we need to develop this skill.

One way to do this is to vow to simply pay attention. Really WATCH and LISTEN to what’s going on around you. Jot down the things you notice that made you smile on any given day – a single bright bluebird flying across your field of vision to land on a bare branch, the warm scent of fresh bread as you walk by the bakery section of the grocery, the taste of perfectly-brewed coffee, the sound of a favorite song on the radio, the feel of your cat’s fur, and so on. Noticing these things is excellent practice to begin accepting grace.

Accepting grace doesn’t keep the bad days from coming, of course. But you just may handle them better. This is coming from a woman whose refrigerator developed a nasty leak and basically flooded the kitchen this week. My reaction was to throw towels on the mess while my Other Half contacted a friend who has a shop vac. We then loaded the food in the disconnected fridge into coolers and made alfredo sauce for dinner to use up the milk, cream, eggs, and Parmesan. I was rather proud of us for that. We were irritated, of course. But not with each other, which is key. (The fridge is fixed, by the way.)

The Universe is not out to get you, Diva. Things sometimes break. People sometimes make lousy decisions that affect you. It’s hard to not take it personally – I get that – but it really isn’t personal. So when those times arrive, politely excuse yourself, scream in your car with the radio turned up if you need to (or with the shower running; whatever works, just don’t scare children and animals) and start pulling yourself together.

And be on the lookout for the Lovely in your life. 

Yesterday, for example, I met a friend for coffee and chit-chat. The coffee shop had a bucket of flowers on a table – apparently, a local florist had taken carnations, added a ribbon and a note to them, and dropped them off for patrons to enjoy. There was a single lavender flower left in the bucket and I picked it up, enjoyed its spicy scent, put it back down, and ordered my coffee. As my friend and I left the shop to enjoy sitting at one of the café tables on the sidewalk, a young man whose job involved hard labor from the look of him, held the door open for us, which I thought was quite kind. We settled down at the table and began our visit. Lo and behold, the young man came out with his coffee and the flower, which he brought straight over to me, saying, “You ought to have it.” How delightful!

As we were wrapping up our visit, another man stopped me on the sidewalk to compliment my cowboy boots, saying, “I’ve seen red and I’ve seen black, but I’ve never seen emerald green boots before.” Again – how delightful!

Let the Universe make you happy. And work to accept the Grace it is trying to extend to you. After all, angels walk among us – wouldn’t it be a shame to miss them?

Spread joy!