It’s been one month and one week since I fell.
It was a short fall, but an extremely hard hit and it left
me with deep cuts and swelling. “There might be areas of your face that just
won’t heal the same,” the ER doctor told me.
Darn it, I thought. In my late thirties I was just coming to
terms with my face. It certainly wasn’t perfect, but it was mine and every sunspot
or laugh line was earned. I have beat myself up for a month over this simple
but impactful fall. How could I be so careless? It’s truly changed my mindset
regarding many things, the biggest being how quickly health can change.
Our children didn’t look at me for days. In fact, Cyrus
wouldn’t be in the same room with me until day five. That hurt worse than the
open wounds. But in defense of the four-year-old, I didn’t like to look in the
mirror. On the fifth day he called out for help in the bathroom. It was music
to my ears. “Yes! Mommy can help you!” I said from the other side of the door.
“I can come in there with you?” I asked permission before entering.
He paused. “Yeah. You can come in…just don’t look at me.” Pretty
demanding for a kid who still wears Velcro shoes.
After day four Caroline, the natural encourager, would give
me a daily update on how I looked, as though the stranger squinting back at me
in the mirror was lying. “Eww. Nose still looks scary. But I can kind of see
one eyeball today, Mom. You’re getting better!” She’s the only child allowed to
choose my rest home.
This fall has made me consider grace. Not just grace in a
way that if I had more of it, I wouldn’t have these scars on my face today. But
showing grace towards a person.
Grace: We’re usually very free to give it. Maybe in our
homes with young children, we’ll always clean up their mess. Or with aging parents,
we’ll always give them more time to finish a task. Or even new recipes that
just didn’t turn out – we make notes along the page to improve it for next time.
Maybe we freely show grace in our careers as teachers, or
loan officers, or line supervisors. We value that time as teachable, coachable
moments. We extend grace and expect better next time.
Often, we freely extend grace to erroneous cashiers, mixed
up waitresses or doctor offices running on their own time. Everyone has a bad
day now and then.
We even show grace to the weatherman. He’s wrong fifty
percent of the time and we still watch him faithfully every single morning!
We show grace to so many, why is it difficult to extend it
to ourselves?
Perhaps your to-do list constantly looms over you, or you’re
feeling overwhelmed by the demands of your day-to-day routine. Maybe you’re
just sick over how a conversation went, reeling from a failed relationship, or a
missed opportunity you can’t let go. Maybe your health has changed, or even your
hair color.
Give yourself grace. The same kind of grace you would extend
to a stranger.
If they deserve it, why don’t you?
A month later, we’ve settled into a new normal which
includes a lot of Mederma, doctor appointments, and ball cap wearing.
Last week I tucked the kids into bed and left the room.
Cyrus called me back.
“Yeah buddy?” I asked.
“Will we be able to have a birthday party this year?” he
asked softly.
“Of course – why wouldn’t you?” I responded.
He put his hand up and motioned in a circle all around his
face, referencing the mess I’d made of mine.
“CY-RUUUUSSS….” Caroline groaned as she rolled her eyes.
“Just because Mommy hurt her face doesn’t mean we can’t have a birthday.
Besides. She’s not as ugly as she used to be.”
See? Grace.
