What am I missing?
The word grace has a lot of meanings. Grace us with your presence, good graces, move with grace, grace period, your grace, say grace, grace the cover. Let’s talk today about the grace you give. The kind you give to others and the kind you give yourself. The dictionary calls this one, “courteous goodwill”. We are in a moment that calls for more grace. We have all been in situations where we need others' grace. If you’ve ever run a stop sign and signaled the other driver your apologies, you are asking for grace. Yet, often, when we are the ones on the other side of that interaction we are quick to curse the other person. What if, in those moments, we thought something different? What if we paused and asked, what could I be missing?
What am I missing? is a powerful question that helps us to look past our in-the-moment frustration and redirect our thoughts in a more productive and humanizing way. It encourages us to think of other possibilities than the one we are currently viewing. When you are livid at the fact that the ninth call you’ve made to your cell phone carrier requires you to input the same information again, it might be helpful to ask what am I missing? When your neighbor parks at the end of your driveway even though you know they know it’s annoying you, ask what am I missing? When you keep making the same mistake over and over again, ask what am I missing?
When you give grace to others you are acknowledging that we are all in this together. It puts our shared experience into focus. All of us struggle with things, mess up, make the wrong choice. Grace honors the similarity of those circumstances. When you give yourself grace, you give others permission to do the same. Grace allows you to let go of self-criticism, shame, and pity and in the space that creates, you have room to build something new.
We can’t choose our first, knee-jerk thought to a circumstance but you can choose the second thought. By intentionally pausing to consider what else could be factoring into a puzzling, maddening encounter, you are extending grace. The courteous goodwill of recognizing that there might be something going on that you aren’t privy to or don’t understand. You are honoring the humanness that Brad Meltzer speaks to when he says, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about”. When you meet a moment with grace you fight against the rolling, unrelenting tide of negativity we all battle.
