A New Take on Grace

As we learn from the Parable of the Ten Virgins, we cannot fake our way through the important challenges that life gives us. If I want to have patience, I must put in the time and work required to obtain that virtue. It is the same with charity, and all other virtues. No matter how much patience, love or kindness my spouse or my best friend or my mom has, I cannot borrow these virtues from them when my need for them turns up in my own life. Knowing this, I decided I needed to get to work “filling my own lamp”, as it were, with some needed patience and love.Thus, I recently began looking at what things in my life might be impeding my spiritual growth as well as what good habits I might be lacking.  With so many faults, it was hard to know where to begin. OF course, I needed to pray more fervently and make scripture study a priority. But in some ways what I needed was a paradigm shift: a new way of seeing my situation with my children. Let me explain. So many times, when I’m interacting with my children, they do something that irritates me or, more accurately stated, they do things that bring out my insecurities and fears.  An example might be something like Child A loses patience with Child B and proceeds to shout and call names and, if things get really bad, Child A may even hit Child B. In observing their argument, my mind flashes forward to Child A’s adult life and I wonder what her temper means for her future relationships…and will she even be able to have successful relationships? And then I speak up to solve the problem from a place of fear and insecurity, which response on occasion comes out as a shout. And then, I realize I am shouting and the guilt sets in. And in my head I begin berating myself because obviously if I had control of myself then I would be a better example and this child wouldn’t behave in this way because they’d have a good example and what is my problem and why haven’t I learned this by now and so on and so forth.  Now, episodes like these don’t always occur in my home, but they were frequent enough that I began an earnest effort to correct them. In my pleading with the Lord for help in this area the answer came through a Mormon philosopher named Adam Miller who often speaks about Grace.  Miller’s explanation of Grace is what I’d like to speak to you about briefly today.

Traditionally, we as Latter-day Saints see grace in three ways. One, we know that it is by the Grace of God through his son Jesus Christ that all who ever lived will be resurrected having their spirits and physical bodies reunited after death. Second, it is through Grace that we can overcome spiritual death through repentance and keeping the commandments. And finally, we see grace, as outlined on LDS.org, as something that “helps us every day. It strengthens us to do good works we could not do on our own. The Lord promised that if we humble ourselves before Him and have faith in Him, His grace will help us overcome all our personal weaknesses.” Adam Miller, after a series of philosophical proofs and borrowing from a definition from a French Philosopher suggests a fourth definition of grace. He says grace is also the “giveness” of life. What that means is that instead of seeing life through the lens of work where all that we do in life is to achieve one particular end or another, we would do well to see life through the lens of grace where all instances, moments, hardships or obstacles have been given specifically to us from God for our betterment or, in other words, all of our moments are a Grace from God. Each circumstance we are given is not to be judged as good or bad, but rather, we are to care for each moment and do so by acting in Charity. Elder Uchtdorf talked about this same idea in the April 2012 general conference. He shared a story about how he often rides bikes with his wife but that once and a while he gets the idea to try for a better time or to race. When he does this his wife kindly reminds him that,

“Dieter, it’s not a race; it’s a journey. Enjoy the moment.”

How right she is!

Sometimes in life we become so focused on the finish line that we fail to find joy in the journey. I don’t go cycling with my wife because I’m excited about finishing. I go because the experience of being with her is sweet and enjoyable.

Doesn’t it seem foolish to spoil sweet and joyful experiences because we are constantly anticipating the moment when they will end?

Do we listen to beautiful music waiting for the final note to fade before we allow ourselves to truly enjoy it? No. We listen and connect to the variations of melody, rhythm, and harmony throughout the composition.

Do we say our prayers with only the “amen” or the end in mind? Of course not. We pray to be close to our Heavenly Father, to receive His Spirit and feel His love.

We shouldn’t wait to be happy until we reach some future point, only to discover that happiness was already available—all the time! Life is not meant to be appreciated only in retrospect. “This is the day which the Lord hath made … ,” the Psalmist wrote. “Rejoice and be glad in it.” [Psalm 118:24.]

When we view grace in this new way, we no longer view the tasks to be done and the hardships to endure, as a difficult means to some distant intangible end.  Instead, the tasks and hardships are the deliverance of grace in and of themselves. Work itself then becomes a Grace.    

For some reason, this idea of grace resonated with me.  It sort of gave me the paradigm shift I’d been looking for.  I’d always heard the quote enjoy the journey, but up until I came upon Miller’s ideas, I never understood how exactly I could go about doing that.  I began to understand that enjoying the journey is wrapped up in this two-step process.  First, we have to strive to see each moment as a gift especially for us, as something we need in in our lives: for enjoyment, growth, or understanding.  And secondly, we care for the gift by acting in charity.

When I began trying to apply this principle, I realized how often I wasn’t engaging in so many important moments in my day to day life.  Instead of viewing something like Paloma’s refusal to put on her seatbelt on as a challenge to be endured, I could stop, view the moment as a gift, as an opportunity to grow and be charitable. And in an instant, the whole situation changes.  I suddenly gain a measure of patience that wasn’t there before and my tone changes.  Just as promised, when I open myself up to grace I am given power beyond our own.  I can do a good work for Paloma that I wouldn’t have been able to do on my own.  Paloma immediately senses the shift and lets her guard down and the power struggle fades.  No longer clouded by anger, an idea comes to my mind to have her first buckle in her baby doll in the adjacent seat, and then her own.  She agrees and we both end smiling instead of crying.  I began to realize how often I was viewing the interactions that I had with my children as moments to just get through rather than moments to be enjoyed.  If I could remember to view all situations as gifts and opportunities for growth, a distinct softening of the heart would occur.

But alas, this remembering is a hard thing to do.  I feel much like Ben Franklin when he set out to live by his 13 virtues and said “I was surprised to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined.”  It was amazing to me to discover how often I am not present in the moment.  Not being present means not being able to act with the charity that a particular circumstance calls for.  Not being present means that we are not seeing the moment as a gift from God or as an opportunity that has been given to us for growth.  Miller points out three common distractions that sidetrack us from being fully present in each moment of our lives.  The distractions include: reeling over past mistakes, fantasizing or fearing the future and boredom.  I find these distractions mentioned to be fascinating because I struggle with all of them.  First of all, reeling over past mistakes.  Let me give you an example.  Last Sunday around 11 O'clock or so I got a call from Linsee Christensen.  She said, “Oh hey how are you doing?  Are you getting ready for your talk?”

“What do you mean, my talk for next week?  It’s for next week, right” Well it turned out it was not for the following week but for that very day.  I was willing to give the talk anyway, but Brother Christensen graciously stepped in and was kind enough to give me another week to prepare.  Then, a little while later I was arriving at church and I saw Sister Tikalsky carrying some food and all of the sudden I remembered having received an email a few weeks back about being in charge of snacks for the nursery at some point.  “Oh my gosh,” I thought to myself, “I totally forgot that I was supposed to bring snacks on one of these Sundays.”  Then, a little while later while enjoying Sister Moon’s Senior Sharing Time Lesson in primary, a nice young woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if I still was going to join them.   “Oh yeah, sure” I replied. But I had totally forgotten that Sister Glenn had asked me to share an experience with the young woman a week earlier.  Luckily, I had some thoughts ready to share. But the point is, I’d forgotten.  And here’s where the sin of reeling over past mistakes could easily set in.  In this moment, I had a choice.  I could escape the moment of pain by easily beginning negative self-talk. I could begin berating myself for being unorganized, totally flaking, and letting people down.  Or I could remain present in the moment by seeing it as a grace from God, an opportunity for growth.  I could live in the moment by repenting and resolving to put commitments into my phone calendar.  I don’t have to waste time by wallowing in self-loathing.  It is Satan who wants us to do that.  Therefore, the negative self-talk we do is unproductive, it is being ungrateful, and it is a sin.

The same goes for fantasizing and or fearing the future.  I don’t know how many times I’ve seen one of my kids behave badly and instead of seeing the moment as a teaching opportunity, I automatically go in my head and begin to imagine how my child’s shortcomings at age 3 or 5 or 7  will manifest themselves when my children are adults.  Then, allowing the fear and anxiety that the image in my mind has created to take the forefront, I respond impatiently, or in an overly-critical way.  The better alternative is to be in the moment with the child, on their level, trying to figure out how to respond with Charity.  It takes real work to treat each moment with the care it deserves.  The moment we begin ruminating over something in our heads, we have stopped being present making it more difficult to be open into the spirit.

Boredom is another state that can block us from seeing the Grace of God.  Often we are just bored with many of the tasks or circumstances of life, so we adopt habits to try and escape or dull our sensitivities. 

Over all the task of seeing each circumstance as a grace from God, and then acting charitably is a very daunting one.  It is one and the same with the charge to “be ye therefore perfect.”  I still have a long way to go in feeling like I can respond gracefully to the daily circumstances God gives to me.  Just ask anyone in my family.  I am lucky if I remember to apply this concept a few times a day. But Latter-day Saints do not lower their standards because they are hard to achieve.  Instead, we should follow the Savior’s example in growing from grace to grace.