"Grace isn’t about having a second chance; grace is having so many chances that you could use them through all eternity and never come up empty."
- Shauna Niequist
Grace. What a word. In Christian circles, the
word grace is tossed around in thousands of different ways. Sometimes it’s
referring to God’s forgiveness displayed through the death and resurrection of
Jesus. Sometimes it’s referring to an abstract theological principle that is
supposedly at the core of what it means to be a Christian. Other times, grace
refers to something that is beautiful or skillful; a dancer or a painter can be
said to be full of grace. But for me, grace isn’t an abstract theological
concept or a frivolous adjective. It’s a way of life.
The
fact that I am still standing today, full of faith and hope for the future
(most of the time anyway) - that is grace. The friends and mentors that God has
brought along my path, who have sojourned with me and offered me guidance in my
meanderings - that is grace. The valuable life lessons that I have learned in
every church and spiritual community that I have been a part of - that is grace.
Grace is a very real, tangible experience that lies at the very heart of what
it means to be reconciled to God and also to be a minister of reconciliation.
It’s the space that we give ourselves and others to stumble and fall without
judgement or condemnation. It’s the hand we extend to help lift up those who
have wronged us when they have fallen. Grace is the one thing that can heal all
our wounds, bridge all of our divides, and ultimately save all of our souls.
Grace alone.
Grace
is as hard to live out as it is to experience. It’s a radical notion that flips
upside down every part of our lives. Grace, when properly understood, calls us
out from comfort and in to some of the most painful situations and
circumstances for the sake of bringing healing and redemption to our world.
After I became a Christian, I still found
myself living in a very toxic and dysfunctional environment. Coming to Jesus
didn’t magically change the circumstances of my life. Though I had found
redemption, I still had to return to my life that was clouded by the darkness
of sin. Each afternoon, I would walk up the street from the bus stop to my
house, checking to see if my dad was stumbling around drunk outside or if he
had wandered off to a neighbour’s trailer. If he wasn’t home, I’d hurry inside
and lock the door, keeping him from coming in and harassing me all afternoon.
If he was home, I would try to make it inside without acknowledging him, lock
myself in my room, turn on the Christian television networks, and ignore his
repeated attempts to mess with me. Inevitably, however, the day would end with
a fight. Whether between my dad and me or between my mom and dad, if my dad was
drinking, there was going to be an argument that would eventually escalate into
full-scale war. Night after night, I found myself on my knees in my room, eyes
swollen and red from all the tears, begging God to take me out of these
circumstances. I couldn’t understand why God would allow me and my family to go
through so much pain.
In
the midst of my pain and suffering, God began to teach me the truth about
grace. The lesson would take me years to begin to realise, but once I began to
get a grasp of the power of grace, my eyes were opened and I began to see my
life and my suffering with a new set of lenses.
All
the way through High School, I resented my father for the abuse that he
subjected me to. Before I left for college, I had made sure that my father was
finally arrested in order to end my mom’s suffering when I moved to Chicago.
After my dad was put in prison for his abuse, my mom moved out of our trailer
and to another town. I knew that my dad would have a hard time finding her when
he was finally out of prison. When I left home for college, I never intended to
see or hear from my father again. And that was absolutely fine by me.
Over the course of my first semester, I was
forced to begin dealing with a lot of my internal junk that had accumulated
throughout my childhood. Now that I was living thousands of miles away from
home ‘on my own’, I was faced with the reality that I was becoming an adult.
Life was going to look fundamentally different. I realised that that I had made
it through my childhood, that I was finally free from abuse. But I also
recognised that severe damage had been done to my soul. The anger and malice I
had bottled up for nearly two decades finally began to be released in the form
of a deep depression and severe panic attacks. My freshman year was filled with
late nights weeping in the utility closet on my dormitory floor. I would wake
in the middle of the night in deep panic, feeling like I was going to die. One
night, the attack became so severe that my RA ended up calling an ambulance and
having me taken to the emergency room.
Earlier
that day I had been on the phone with my mom. She told me that my dad had been
released from prison and that he had been living on the streets. I wasn’t sure
how she knew this information, but it didn’t bother me much. My mom continued
to tell me that my dad had attempted to hurt himself and called her from the
hospital earlier in the week. I felt my body begin to tense up. She then said
the very thing I was most afraid of. She told me that she had gone to visit him
in the hospital and that he was now back living with her. She assured me that
he had changed. That he was no longer drinking. That he was on a new path. My
face turned red with anger and my body grew weak. I think I swore and then hung
up the phone. A wave of emotions swept over me. Anger at my mom for allowing my
father to come back into our lives. Sadness and confusion over the fact that my
dad had tried to harm himself. Fear of what would happen when I returned home
for Christmas in just a few weeks. The rest of that day became a blur, until I
woke up late that evening in sheer panic.
After spending the night in the hospital, I
knew that something had to change. I knew that my anxiety was a result both of
mental damage that had been done throughout my childhood and a profound fear. I
feared what life would look like now that my mom and dad were back together. I
also feared what would happen if my dad truly did turn his life around. I felt
a little like I imagine the Prophet Jonah must have felt when God told him that
he planned to save the Ninehvites. I had spent eighteen years under the abuse
and dysfunction of this man. Now, after six months away, he’s all of a sudden
‘changed’? I doubted that it was true. But more than that, I didn’t want it to
be true. I wanted more time to feel bad for myself. I wanted to have someone to
blame for the struggles I faced. I wanted to have an excuse to continue
justifying my own dysfunction.
As the time approached for me to return home
for Christmas and be reunited with my father for the first time in over a year,
I spent a lot of time in prayer. I asked God to heal my heart. To help me to
love like He loves. Over time as I prayed, a word came to the surface of my
mind. That word was grace. At the time, grace was more of a theological
concept for me than it was anything practical. I wasn’t sure what to do with
‘grace’ or why it kept resurfacing in my times of prayer. In order to find more
direction, I looked to the pages of Scripture to read about grace. And
inevitably, as I read, I was led to the clearest demonstration of grace ever to
happen – the cross.
No
matter what you may believe actually took place when Rabbi Jesus was crucified,
we can all agree with great confidence that the events of Good Friday forever
changed the course of human history. Jesus’ death was the very epitome of
injustice. He had committed no crime. He had done no one any harm. However, his
message about the Kingdom of God and his lax attitude when it came to upholding
the religious laws of the Jews had offended the Roman government and the Jewish
religious leaders respectively. As Jesus’ message gained a following, they
feared that he would gain power and inevitably overthrow their rule. We know,
however, that this was not Jesus’ goal at all. None the less, the religious
leaders and government officials conspired together to kill Jesus. Throughout
his arrest, his trial, his torture, and his crucifixion, the attitude that
Jesus kept was one of pure, undiluted grace. As the government officials mocked
him and beat him, he did not retaliate with anger or utter an unkind word. As
they flogged him, spat on him, and hung him high upon a cross, he looked down
and didn’t speak a single word of curse. Instead, he pronounced forgiveness.
‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.’ (Luke 23:34)
At the worst point of his suffering, Christ demonstrated the power of grace. In
the midst of his pain, in the midst of insults and curses being hurled, in the
midst of his humiliation, he didn’t play into the hands of injustice. He didn’t
return a curse for a curse. He didn’t call on his disciples to fight those who
were murdering him. Instead, he looks down into his murderers’ eyes and utters
a word of forgiveness. That is grace.
Jesus’
demonstration of grace spoke clearly to my situation: I needed to demonstrate
grace to my father, who had harmed me. Only in extending forgiveness and
blessing to him could the power of resentment and pain be broken in my life.
Grace not only would be the key to healing my own soul, but it had the
potential to unlock healing in my dad’s life as well. I didn’t know what
extending grace would look like for me when I returned home, but I was
determined to give it to my dad, no matter what my experience with him was
like.
When my flight from Chicago landed home in
Baltimore just a few days before Christmas, I walked off the jet bridge more
slowly than usual. I knew that in just a few moments, I would be reunited with
my mom and dad who had come to pick me up from the airport. My heart pounded in
my chest. I wanted more than anything to get back on the plane, rather than
have to face whatever lay before me. But I continued, slowly, towards the
baggage claim area, whispering fervent prayers under my breath with every step.
As I turned the corner to exit the secured area, I saw my mom standing tall
with a bright smile and arms extended to welcome me home. Next to her stood a
man I barely recognised. Skinnier than normal, shaved head, frail looking. It
was my father. He stood awkwardly to the side of my mom and I as we hugged, not
saying a word. I stepped over towards him and extended my arms giving him a
quick hug. In that moment, tears welled up in both of our eyes. Though no words
were spoken, there was a palpable sense of release.
Just
a few weeks before, I had expected never to see my dad again, and I was okay with
that. Bitterness and pain clouded my thinking. But now, in a moment, my heart
was softened. And I sensed that my dad’s was too. We walked to my mom’s car
quietly, not saying a word to each other. Yet, there was a sense that
everything was going to be okay. The next couple of weeks were quite awkward
and uncomfortable. My dad and I felt like we had to get to know each other all
over again. We spent many days having short conversations with one another when
my mom was at work. It was hard for me to talk to him and clearly for him to
talk to me. But we did it. I worked hard to try to extend blessings to him. I
prayed for him regularly. I bought him gifts at Christmas, a small sign of
forgiveness. By the end of my three-week winter vacation, there was a real
sense that reconciliation had begun. I had also learned just how hard and just
how powerful grace can be. A few weeks of kindness instead of resentment opened
the door for healing and restoration of 18 years’ worth of pain. Over the next
semester, I would spend time talking to my dad on the phone from Chicago,
intentionally showing him that I was working on forgiveness. I began going to
counselling to work through my own pain. And I continued to try to demonstrate
the grace that God had extended to me through Jesus.
Throughout life, we will inevitably
experience a lot of pain at the hands of other people. We are broken. We will
hurt each other. We all have been wounded. And the way that many of us respond to
such situations is by hurting other people. With my dad, the easiest and most
satisfying response would have been to refuse to speak to him or to call up all
of his past mistakes. My natural impulse is to want to defend myself and to
retaliate. ‘An eye for an eye’ as Moses wrote in the Book of Leviticus. How
satisfying to cause harm to those who have harmed us! The problem is that when
we treat others the way they have treated us, we only further injustice. When
we refuse to forgive our oppressor we will only add more fuel to the fire of
oppression. If I had retaliated against my father, he might possibly have
returned to drinking, or worse. He might have fallen deeper into the cycle of
addiction and abuse. But the way of grace calls us to extend favour to
the least deserving of people. It calls us to bless those who constantly
curse us. It calls for us to love those who spew hatred at us. It calls
us to lift up the very person or people who constantly tear us down. It
is radically counterintuitive. It seems foolish, unwise, and unrealistic. We
can come up with a million rational excuses for why being gracious is not the
best course of action. Won’t we be just encouraging their sinful behaviour?
Won’t we only give more power to their unjust attitudes? In order to answer
these questions, we need only look back at the cross.
My
situation with my dad is only one small example of the power of grace. I don’t
tell it to demonstrate my own spiritual maturity, but rather how God’s grace
can work in the midst of some of the most spiritually stunted and injured
individuals.
The way of
grace isn’t the easiest path. It doesn’t make the past go away. But what it
does do is offer a new beginning for everyone involved. With my dad, I was
freed from living my life in response to his neglect and abuse. He was freed
from the burden of guilt and shame. Today, things may not be perfect, but
healing has begun. Grace has reunited a son to a father he never thought he’d
see again. Grace has taught me to love and value the church that brought me to
faith, even in the midst of all the wrong that was done. And time and time
again, grace has covered my failures, healed my wounds, and liberated me from
slavery to shame. Grace.
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