tears of grace

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

-Anne Lamott

There are times in life when the air is thick with the presence of God.  It happens sometimes when people worship with abandon, when there is passion and joy and reverence on every face.

Today was the end of the Daniel Fast.  There was a prayer vigil from 6-9 (during which time I was at a rehearsal for conducting) and then Celebration at 9.  I came straight from my rehearsal at 9:15, hurried but glad.  and as communion began, I sat in the back row with my thoughts.
If God is the love of my life, why is my life filled with so many, many other things?  Every so often I think about this but I always get stuck on the hows.  I understand the whats and the whys, but it's how to live differently that I never seem to get.  And I can't understand why I am forgiven every time.  Every time I come to God ashamed not at what I am, but at what I fail to be, I am forgiven.

But then I come to the mystery of grace.  I have been so extravagantly blessed, so easily forgiven, and I deserve none of it.  As I sat there in a room full of people singing to God, a dear beautiful friend came and sat with me.  She hugged me and asked how I was, and I asked her to say a prayer for me..."to be able to accept grace, even though I don't deserve it."

And that, as always, was all I needed.  it's a struggle to find the right words, to describe the way it felt to be there.  It was the kind of atmosphere where people closed their eyes and held out their hands and hearts to God.  where people prayed out loud and kept singing after the music stopped.  where I forgot that I hate to cry in front of people and let tears travel down my cheeks.
they were tears that wondered at grace.  they embraced the impossibility of something so much bigger than my questions, insecurities, and self-criticisms.  they gave thanks for the room full of people who love God with their whole hearts, souls, strength, and minds.  to say it simply, being there was such freedom - to give up the things that bind us down and worship God freely.  And when we sang the line "So I'll stand, with arms high and heart abandoned", almost every arm in the room was raised.