Last week, after a fortnight-long break fuelled by holidays and laziness, I got back into the water.
The water I speak of is the ocean, and it is frigid, as this is winter in the Southern hemisphere. I’m one of those people whom, months ago, I would have pegged as a lunatic: wetsuit-clad pain-seekers devoted too much to exercise.
But here’s the thing: after the pain subsides and the feeling comes back to my fingers and toes, the frigid water is actually enjoyable. And this isn’t my first time at this particular kind of rodeo–I remember runs through Central Park during blizzards, accompanied only by the rueful shared glances with other weirdos.
I’ve been this way for awhile, it seems.
This way meaning both “the way I am” and “in the direction I’m going” which is to say, away from what feels comfortable and safe toward what is unknown and unpredictable.
It’s not a bad way to travel, if you can handle the minor inconveniences and occasional hypothermia.
“Back on my bullshit” is one way to describe it, and I relegate that phrase to recaps of the oopsies, both large and small, that I seem to repeat: overlubricating in social situations (you know what I mean), resorting to sugar and breading for comfort, losing my temper over the same stuff with the kids, pole-vaulting into cynicism and its familiar shores.
Luckily, there’s a grace that goes beyond my bullshit, that renders my efforts to “be better” or “do more” so minor as to be ultimately inconsequential when it comes to both my fate and my faith: I am held by what has been done for me, not what I’ve done. So these repeats often turn into redos: sometimes with the same results, but often with tiny movements forward, toward more freedom; more grace.
Was I thrilled to wake up with a hangover on Saturday for the first time I can remember in awhile? No, and neither was my bathroom. But the moments shared the night before–sun setting and champagne flowing as four of us shared life together and spoke about what we mean to each other–those are what last longer. Grace.
Do I enjoy the mental unraveling I feel when The Kid devolves into an anxiety spiral and I struggle not to lose it? Not a bit. But what I can love, what I can even rest in, is the moment when I see a tiny shift in him–a “but” that prefaces not another worry but a realisation that there is more he is seeing now that he wasn’t before. And the thought that my own journey is part of what helped him get there. Grace.
Repentance, redemption, change: these are the language of grace, but they do not hinge on me getting life right, on having a game plan for improvement, like they do on me sprawling at the feet of grace and watching as it lifts me, moves me, like the waves send me to the shore, where home and a hot shower await.