Everything is grace
Prose + photos
“Everything is grace” says St. Thérèse of Lisieux and also says me on a rainy Sunday night sitting on the daybed in the room above the garage with my mom watching Mulan on VHS on a bulky TV we’ve had since the early aughts—she, 69 years old, me, 32 years old, the dog, 10 years old, our faces showing our age and our laughter (at a butt joke) showing that grown-ups never grow up completely.
“Everything is grace” says St. Thérèse of Lisieux and also says me sitting across from an old friend while we eat burgers with Heinz ketchup and fried zucchini dipped in ranch while we stare at snow-capped mountains in the horizon, one of which I’ve climbed because my body is strong enough to move across unstable surfaces despite weaknesses in my ankles and weakness in my mind which worries that there might be a mountain lion stalking me as I scale to the sky—12,000 feet closer to the clouds.
“Everything is grace” says St. Thérèse of Lisieux and also says me on a run in a place I am not from having gotten completely lost, having been overcome by panic that I do not know where I am or where I should go or how I should get there, having found a couple walking their dog with a comical underbite who, having seen my tears, stop to offer to help me and stay with me until I find my way back.
“Everything is grace” says St. Thérèse of Lisieux and also says me on a sweltering afternoon at a gas station deep, deep in Nebraska having prayed to Sweet Baby Jesus that we would make it here, to this undesirable destination that I actually deeply desired whenever the gas gauge said we only had 6 miles left in the tank and GPS told us we were 10 miles away, but Won’t He Do It (!!) because we made it and had the money to pay the preposterous price to fill this mid-size SUV which has delivered us from Ohio to Michigan to Indiana to Illinois to Iowa to Nebraska—a journey across field after field after field which has reminded us that it is a gift to have a place to call home and it is a gift to leave it and set on an adventure, too.
“Everything is grace” says St. Thérèse of Lisieux and also says me on a Thursday night walk down by the river in mid-May, the smell of springtime filling my nostrils and reminding me that I am a person on a planet that has a lot of things wrong with it but has a lot of things right with it, too, like rivers and birds and honeysuckle and tiny wild strawberries that grow from the ground without anyone asking them to.
Everything is grace.
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From time to time, I like to write short prose pieces. If this was something you enjoyed, feel free to check out the other entries I’ve shared on my Substack in the past.
Always love your prose, Grace! This was lovely. And amen to St. Thérèse of Lisieux and also you.
Ah gosh that is beautifully written