“You really are a person with a lot of grace, Ericka,” said the voice coming from the phone here in my office. Monday’s child is full of face, Tuesday’s child is full of grace.
Is it grace of which I am full? Or is it a desire to please, to keep the peace, to try as hard as I might not to take up as much space as my actual larger body indeed does take? Is it the passion to wish away my loud voice and sometimes thoughtless ramblings, and a wanting to erase the look of exasperation on the face of the one who is victim to my idea euphoria, when I haven’t realized that I haven’t taken a breath in about three minutes, while excitedly describing a larger than life vision. Is it grace, or is it apology? An apology which I have been making ever since I realized that my brain doesn’t function the way that the standards of the world would have it to do.
If it truly were grace of which I am full, then I would have an easier time entering a room or a friendship, a ministry, a volunteer project saying:
“Hi! I’m Ericka! I have had undiagnosed ADD since I was a child, and I’ve been covering it up with apologies and lists of “ways to become better,” along with an extreme extraversion and sometimes self-harming need to “succeed,” in order to prove to the rest of the world (without ADD) that I am OK. I may not always enter on time, but when I am there, I will give my all. I may not have the most organized desk, but you can bet that I’m still working after I leave the office, and that my best ideas will be when I have left and my brain (which is capable of such things) will solve that problem we’ve been working on for days…yeah, I’ll solve it while throwing the frisbee to my kid in the backyard. When everyone else is stuck ‘in the box,’ I can be counted on to think outside the box, if you’ll allow me to. I can also hold two opposing thoughts in a work group, and actually see how they can actually be part of one project, if you will wait for me. As your friend, I will be thinking about you at all times, even if I don’t do well with the traditional ways of expressing my love. But I will express it by being passionately excited about those things about which you are excited, even if they are new to me. My brain can hold so many things at once, and even though this is a detriment to some things, it is a gift to others. I have a lot of friends, which does not mean that I love you any less. It only means that I can connect one person to another.”
And even if I did enter with that statement, there will be those, like other parents and the secretary at my children’s school, and many others, who will still gossip about how my kids are always late, and ask out loud just how I function in my job (which actually requires, first and foremost Godly compassion, and then inspired creativity, things that cannot be taught and don’t always require what you have assessed I lack). I’ll work on compassion for them, after I stop beating myself up for being who I am, and wondering who else has made such an assessment of me.
Full of Grace? I’m working on it. Every day of the week. And I’m starting with Tuesday’s child-me. She’s got far to go.
reverendmotherpk 