When most people think of grace, they think of something elegant like a dove.  We imagine grace as being simple, charming, lovely and somewhat easy.  Somehow we think a life of grace sounds exactly like "Amazing Grace" is played at Church: quite boring.  For most people, grace hits them like a soft rainbow or a dove and they can merely glance and nod at it as they drive by.  Grace isn't like that for me.  Grace is more like the monster under my bed that keeps me awake at night; grace is what knocks me over, picks me, keeps me awake, puts me to sleep, and is constant inside of me.  Grace is like that inward glow in my soul.

Today I learned something about experiencing grace, and how so often the only way you can receive grace is when you let it pour out of you.  Perhaps grace is that one gift that you receive when you give.

Everyone has people in their life that rub them the wrong way.  I've been lucky in that there is only one person I see on a regular basis I can't get along with.  It's not that my co-worker is a bad girl, it's just that we've never clicked.  I feel like she blames me, she feels like I ignore her.  It hasn't been a bad relationship per say, we just communicate very differently.

Friday night was another late night at the store.  And for some reason beyond me, I volunteered to pick this girl up early Saturday morning at her apartment and driver her to work.  Last night, I went to bed wondering what I was thinking.  Maybe I can call a friend while I drive so I don't have to talk to her, I thought.  Here this girl I did not like I was stuck with tomorrow morning, going out of my way to pick her up, drop her daughter off, and drive her and her son to work.  Oh well, I thought, it will be really quick and I won't ever volunteer to do it again.

When I woke up today long before the sun, I hit snooze just so I could feel the warmth under my covers for the last few minutes.  Somewhere between waking from slumber and fearing the alarm ring, I asked God for some serious grace.  I knew that just to get through the day, I needed grace.  I honestly think now that God had a good chuckle - because he was about to teach me what grace was really about.

Running out the door with my coffee and today's sack lunch, I finally found the small run down apartment in the bad part of town.  This is what my co-worker calls home.  She waved at me from the window, and got her two children ready for work.  I waited, and waited, and eventually just accepted the fact that she was going to make me a little late for work. I silently accept this fact, and greeted her as she loads her luggage and her children into my car.

"Hi Ashley," she said cheerfully and handed me a card with my name doodled with red hearts.  I thought it was sweet she wrote me a note, but put it aside for later.  After I dropped her daughter off and we began our journey to work, we began to talk.  Not about the weather or sports or dumb stuff like that.  We both immediately got in a conversation about God, our lives, and what we prayed about while trying to fall asleep.  I thought about that the rest of the day.  Finally I could see this woman not as a mere co-worker - but as a person.  As a soul.

I still can't remember all about today, somehow ten hour work days have a way of running together.  Somehow at the end of the night, she found out she needed a ride home, and low and behold I was the only one able to take her back.  After a long day of work, I am tired, and now I have to load up my car with her things and her baby's things and drive her all the way back.  The parking lot isn't very well lit, and I sat in my car waiting for her to come out.  She fastens her baby in my backseat, I make sure everyone is comfortable, and we drive away.

Ironically, as we both ride back tired, we start talking about God again.  She tells me about her church, and how she doesn't understand a lot of the harder concepts her pastor talks about.  I talked to her about Christ, the Church, and a little bit about my path of discovering more of Christ.  As I swing by to run a quick errand for her, I realize that my volunteering to drive this woman around this morning was not an accident.  It wasn't random.  I think if God had a photograph of this moment, he would have titled it "grace".  To me, that is a grace moment- when we're tired, confused and wondering what we really signed up for and loving every minute of it.      

Finally somewhere during the trip, she turned me to me and said, "Ashley, I feel like sometimes when I bump into you, I bump right into grace.  There's something different about you."  I laugh and thank her, and inwardly think that she has no idea what that comment did to me.

I drop her off at her apartment, and when I hug her children goodbye, I feel like they could be my own.  Her daughter waved at me, saying she was sad she couldn't come home with me.  At that moment, in the poorly-lite parking lot of her apartment complex, I knew that today God had taught me another lesson about love.  And grace.

As the young mother shut the apartment door behind her, I finally got around to opening the note she wrote me hours earlier.  The hand-written note said: "Ashley, you have been special to me since we met.  I think you're beautiful.  Thank you for being you.  You are doing a great job at life."  


After I read that on the side of the road under a street light, I lost it.  I sat in my car and cried.  I didn't cry because I was tired or stressed or sad.  I cried because I felt like God had answered that prayer I whispered under the covers this morning.  Funny how God had to use the one person in my life who I couldn't get along with to teach me more about grace and love and compassion.

The most beautiful things in this world are the simple ones.