5 Minute Friday: Grace

A week ago I braved the voices and read my post in front of a group of amazing writing cheerleaders. My computer, the one with the less than reliable battery, decided to go stone cold dead in the middle of the reading.

Yup, story of my life.

Thanks Julie for handing over the i-Pad to help a sister out.

I just love this community. It was a privilege and joy to gather and write and read and hug and eat chocolate in real life. Truly.

Ok, this week's five minutes!

My five minutes on "Grace"

We share a middle name, but it is her first name that I want to be called of me when all is said and done. My dad's oldest sister, the one whose name is as beautiful as she is. They call her "Grace" and she has been that to anyone that has known her. She has been that to anyone that has been touched with compassion by her tender soul.

I've always favored my dad's side. The angular face, small frame and big, deep eyes. They are markers of the women on his side that bared down and brought into life children and breathed life into the everyday struggles of their families. Hard times cotton mill gals who weren't afraid to give their families every inch of themselves until their souls hung threadbare.

Grace comes in a small unassuming package. These women who struggled along the road of life left a path for me to walk on rutted out from Depression era wherewithal and bootstrap pulling determination.

The woman whose name is Grace? She is a small slip of a woman who grows more and more gaunt taking on a new likeness to her own mother, my grandmother, who was always sour faced with her hair in a tight black bun sitting frail in her upholstered rocker.

Somehow her eyes never fail to shine grace and I wonder what was the difference between her and her mother?

How do we take all that was left behind us and live a better story? 
How do we shine through the ugly until we make the ugly beautiful?

Age has stooped her and she shrinks smaller and smaller with the days. Her ability to remember, recall and recognize growing ever dimmer. Her mind isn't well. Memories are slipping away, time is slipping away and I feel the time growing short.

This woman that has been called "Grace" since she was newly birthed pink flesh is a living grace to me and I can't begin to tell what her life has meant to me, what her life means for my daughter.

When I say "Hand me down grace" I'm talking about the ability to look forward and back simultaneously and see it all as an infinite gift from an infinite God. 

Because of my aunt, the one with the beautiful soul and heart that doesn't forget, I can look both directions and see grace. Grace behind and grace ahead.