"sucking it up" AND grace

When I was thirteen, as is tradition, I got confirmed as an adult in the Catholic faith.  I didn’t believe in God, so I really shouldn’t have done it, but all my friends were doing it, and I was thirteen.  And I did like the tradition of choosing a new name.  It had to be a saint’s name, so I remember spending weeks worth of library time at school with my friends pouring over the indexes of encyclopedias of female saints.  I ended up choosing Grace.

To prove that we were ready to be confirmed, we had to write a report about our chosen name.  I learned about St. Grace, a wealthy woman who gave up all of her riches to the church.  And I wrote about my beloved (Great-) Aunt Jeanne, who so loved the song “Amazing Grace.”  I also wrote about the little angry fairy named Gráinne (Irish for Grace) who one of my dance teachers told us lived in the fuse box in the basement we practiced in – his attempt to get us not to play in it. (Reporting about Gráinne showed my spiritual maturity. Ha.)

So I became Ellen Clare Mary Grace.

I also had a great-grandmother named Grace.  Years later, when I was hanging out with my Grandma (who is Kathryn Grace), she told me the story of one of her earliest memories: She could see her young girl self sitting on a bench, waiting for the bus with her mother (Grandma Grace), her sister (Aunt Jeanne), and her two brothers.  They had a suitcase with them because Grandma Grace was leaving their father, H.P. He was abusive.  Grandma was born in 1929, and it’s one of her earliest memories.  This couldn’t have been later than the 1930s. Imagine the courage Grandma Grace must have practiced.  Strength beyond what makes sense.  Grace.

(I love the way my friend Kristin talks and writes about grace.  I’m quoting her when I say “beyond what makes sense.”)

When I was graduating from high school, one of the school secretaries (from whose office I read the morning prayer and announcements over the P.A. each day – what a nerd) gave me a card in which she told me I was “grace under pressure.”  It’s rare that I remember a compliment, so I’m grateful that that one stayed with me.  How seriously kind.

These days, I’m trying to reorient myself toward grace.  “Grace” instead of “suck it up.”  Several weeks after moving to California, I remember reporting incredulously to my hearty friends back in the Midwest, “Holy shit.  Everybody here talks about their feelings so much.  And we’re supposed to listen and adjust accordingly.  It’s like nobody here has ever heard of fucking sucking it up!”

I think probably because I’ve missed my home people so much, I really took “suck it up” as a mantra this past semester. 

I’ve been so miserable.  I’ve lost a bunch of weight. I’ve slept more than I’ve been awake.  I’ve re-watched all of Friday Night Lights and five seasons of The West Wing. I’ve called my mom sobbing at least 7,000 times.  I’ve declined most invitations to get out of the house for dinner or drinks or coffee. 

But I’ve been telling myself that I’ve been “sucking it up” and pushing through.  Sucking what up?

My dear friend Suzanne and I have been talking a lot about “sucking it up.”  It’s an idea that has a lot of pull with both of us, and we’ve been trying to figure out why.  Speaking for myself, I know that in large part, I was raised to suck it up by two parents and four brothers who modeled on the daily that when someone needs something and you can help, even if it’s inconvenient, suck it up and do the right thing.  And I value that value.

I have been equating not sucking it up with being spoiled, privileged, not self-aware, whiny, and weak.  And honestly, I haven’t changed my mind about that. All of this is me trying to wrestle myself into sucking it up. 

I think what I’m trying to do now, though, is get to “sucking it up” and grace.  Rob Bell gets me good on this with what he writes in Love Wins (a book about heaven and hell that I’d really recommend to frustrated Christians) about Jesus' story of the prodigal son.  Most of what I’ve ever heard said about this story focuses on the prodigal son, the one who takes his father’s money, turns up, and then comes back broke, broken, and allegedly sorry.  I can’t relate to that character.  I can relate to the brother that stays home, sucks it up, and does what he’s supposed to do.  That brother is pissed when the prodigal one comes back and the father, instead of rightly chastising him, throws a party.  I always thought that this story was simply about the father extending grace to the asshole.  He gets love and mercy he doesn't deserve.

Here’s what Bell says about the older brother’s reaction to the party: 

First, in his version of events, he’s been slaving for his father for years.  That’s how he describes his life in his father’s house: slaving.  That directly contradicts the few details we’ve been given about his father, who appears to be anything but a slave driver.   

Second, he says his father has never given him a goat.  A goat doesn’t have much meat on it, so even in conjuring up an image of celebration, it’s meager.  Lean.  Lame. The kind of party he envisions just isn’t that impressive.  What he reveals here is what he really thinks about his father: he thinks he’s cheap. 

Third, he claims that his father has dealt with his brother according to a totally different set of standards.  He thinks his father is unfair.  He thinks he’s been wronged, shorted, shafted.  And he’s furious about it. 

All with the party in full swing in the background. 

The father isn’t rattled or provoked.  He simply responds, “My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”  And then he tells him that they have to celebrate. 

“You are always with me,
and everything I have is yours.” 

In one sentence the father manages to tell an entirely different story about the older brother. 

First, the older brother hasn’t been a slave.  He’s had it all the whole time.  There’s been no need to work, obey orders, or slave away to earn what he’s had the whole time. 

Second, the father hasn’t been cheap with him.  He could have had whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it.  Everything the father owns has always been his, which includes, of curse, fattened calves.  All he had to do was receive. 

Third, the father redefines fairness.  It’s not the father hasn’t been fair with him; it’s that his father never set out to be fair in the first place.  Grace and generosity aren’t fair; that’s their very essence.  The father sees the younger brother’s return as one more occasion to practice unfairness.  The younger son doesn’t deserve a party – that’s the point of the party.  That’s how things work in the father’s world.  Profound unfairness. 

People get what they don’t deserve,
Parties are thrown for younger brothers who squander their inheritance. 

After all,
“You are always with me,
and everything I have is yours.” 

 …  

Now most images and understandings people have of heaven and hell are conceived of in terms of separation. 

Heaven is “up” there,
hell is “down” there. 

Two different places,
far apart from each other. 

One over there,
The other over there. 

This makes what Jesus does in his story about the man with the two sons particularly compelling.  Jesus puts the older brother right there at the party, but refusing to trust the father’s version of his story.  Refusing to join in the celebration. 

Hell is being at the party.
That’s what makes it so hellish. 

It’s not an image of separation,
but one of integration. 

In this story, heaven and hell are within each other,
intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other. (166-170) 

“Hell is being at the party,” works for me.  It speaks directly to my frustration with myself for being miserable instead of grateful.  I live in a beautiful part of the country, in a lovely apartment.  I grew up in a loving family, and I have never really wanted for anything.  My inbox has filled up each week that I’ve been home with warm and funny notes from people at home that I love and who love me.  I've had brilliant teachers who have helped me to understand how systematic privilege and oppression works in our world, and who have helped me see my serious privilege.  I really haven't earned all of the wonderful things* in my life.  "Profound unfairness."

And yet I can’t stop crying.  And that makes me feel really ashamed of myself.

But the father in this story doesn’t tell the older, more responsible brother to “suck it up” and act like he’s having fun at the party.  He just reminds him that he’s deeply loved and provided for.  Matthew 6:26-27:

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away barns, and yet God feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

I’ve got this sense of entitlement to doing work that matters.  And I agonize about it.  I want to do it well; I must.  And I don’t think I’m wrong to feel such a sense of urgency. What I need to do is suck it up and get to work gratefully -- because I can and everybody can't.

But I have probably developed an inflated sense of self-importance, and ironically, in doing so, have demoted myself in my understanding of how God knows and loves me.  I’m not a sacred (if broken) child of God, made in God’s image, because of the work that I do; rather, because God created us in God’s creator image, we get to participate with God in re-creating more sacred, less broken versions of ourselves and of our world. Just because we are.  Not tied to a particular job.  We’re always already at the party, if we can just recognize that we are.  God graces us unconditionally, and we must (and we get to!) practice grace by recognizing that.

Now.  What the hell that looks like, to simultaneously suck it up and practice grace, for me or for anyone, I don’t know.

*In no way do I mean to suggest here that White privilege is a "wonderful thing."  I believe deeply that racism significantly dehumanizes white folks, just as for example, sexism significantly dehumanizes men, so often immobilizing them emotionally.  My privileges are inherently tied to disadvantages experienced by people of color, and that makes me lesser.  But the way that White privilege can and has manifested in my life -- e.g., not fearing for my life because others think me monstrous, and etc. -- has afforded me serious comforts.