Estrogen influenced or not, my thoughts have fallen off the path I like to keep them on. The well traveled trail of positive thinking and high energy antics, with roots strategically placed to trip over with names like “love” and “God” and “friends” and “ego”. No no. No path. I’ve been out in the bushes peeing in a patch of poison ivy.

Tonight a little Boy Scout came along with a cup of hot chocolate and helped me find the path again. And the funny thing? I was on it. I was exactly where I need to be, exactly when I needed to be there.

In an hour of listening over wine and gourmet nibbles, a stranger inspired me and made a mark that won’t fade with time. He called me out on the voice in my head, validated my belief in the good of humanity and made me think again.

I can haz a muse?

1grace
Pronunciation: \ˈgrās\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin gratia favor, charm, thanks, from gratus pleasing, grateful; akin to Sanskrit gṛṇāti he praises
Date: 12th century

1 a: unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification b: a virtue coming from God c: a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine grace
2 a: approval, favor barchaic : mercy, pardon c: a special favor : privilege d: disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy, or clemency e: a temporary exemption : reprieve

You know that part in the movie Signs where the alien has the kid in his arms and Mel Gibson has the flashback to his wife, dying? She’s pinned between a car and a tree and she says “tell Merrill to swing away” and he thinks she’s out of her mind (dying, obviously) until that moment years later when it all hits him smack in the face in the living room with the trophy baseball bat?

If you didn’t remember, maybe you do now.

My mom used to call me two things that went beyond the expected variations on my nickname or even *gasp* my real, full name. All three of ‘em. Beyond Megret, McGarrett, Meggers and the like were these two: Clyde and Grace.

Clyde was because I’m a “heavy walker”, have been since I was a tater-tot dipped in ketchup and loaded with salt and pepper. I also had big feet for my age, calves that – in relation to my thighs – resembled a Clydesdale.

Grace was a slam she used on both my sister and I, one I can only imagine she picked up in the 50′s. “Way to go, Grace. I like the way you knocked that entire rack of Funyons over when you tried to be sly about grabbing one in the first place.”

“In youth we learn; in age we understand.” – — Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

I believe, my friends, I’m aging.

December 29th of 2004, I was in the bedroom of my apartment during my Christmas sabbatical. I’d read Blue Like Jazz and Lamb over the course of that week, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt Grace. It’s something I’ve been hesitant to tell others that I knew wouldn’t understand, or those that were outside of my immediate circle. There were a few I IM’ed or emailed about it because I knew they’d understand, I remember as clearly as I can feel this sub-dermal zit brewing on the bridge of my nose that Becky was one of them.

Nearly four years later with the onset of my existential crisis, I’ve been reading again. I’ve been seeking. Exploring. Groping in the dark for the light that will help me find my way. Everywhere I look, everything I read, every conversation or tweet loosely related to my journey brings me back here: to Grace.

I am admittedly a fuckup of epic proportions. I was a horrible student, have binged and purged when it comes to caring about my career, was more times than not a complete headache to both of my parents, and have failed at a million things without even including marriage. I struggle with depression, refusing to medicate for it, I have a hot temper at times and vacillate between a fiery, quick tongue and a jaw clamped shut when it shouldn’t be. I swear too much. I talk to other cars in traffic when I get frustrated.

Of all the things I’m not though, I am not a hypocrite. I know my flaws better than all of you combined and I beat myself up for them regularly.

How fitting; then, that Grace keeps coming…the reminder of what it is, and the peace it brings me and the want and drive and compulsion I have to be a better person every day. To speak from the heart when it hurts and the inherent (and problematic) want better in the lives of everyone I know. Learning to love freely, and accept love without question. To work and work and work to show compassion and to understand those it’s difficult to wrap my feeble little mind around.

A few months ago, Mary Jac and I reconnected after a year apart. I won’t go into details about that, but what’s important is that we each arrived back in each others lives at just the right time. We were in the same spiritual and psychological black holes, and together, we could pull ourselves out. We could lean on, lift up, fireman carry, counsel, coddle, and just flat out hug the stuffing out of each other while the bad man 30 feet up told us to put the lotion in the basket.

It happened over coffee before a cardboard box visit, one of us said “I want a new tattoo” and the other yelped with glee “me too” and when asked of what, the answer was “grace” followed by another “me too”.

So this last weekend when it was burned in us so hard and so fast that our eyes bled saline and we held each other in the dark (both physically and emotionally) I knew it was time. I knew I didn’t want to go a day for the rest of my life without thinking about it and feeling it.

I’m a transmitter. Sometimes I’m sending the signal, but more often, I’m receiving. And my mother? I like to think she was trying to tell me something then, even if she wasn’t. Because it stuck right where I needed it to, in the vulnerable places where I have no choice but to admit my flaws, and to try to do better.

I guess I’d been tugging the covers all night in a restless too-much-garlic-makes-me-hurt sleep. He’s already gone for the day – at the gym huffing and puffing – while I’m hiding from Grayson so I can type.

We talked last night over dinner at Marlow’s about the same things Mary Jac and I talked about on the phone at lunch yesterday afternoon: purpose and feeling full. He doesn’t, I don’t, she doesn’t. Maybe you don’t either. We have roofs over our heads and great friends, we don’t go hungry at night unless it’s by choice and life from the outside seems good. Our hearts tell a different story.

Maybe it’s more of that spiritual void I’ve been stuck on lately, maybe it’s the bigger picture trying to fold us in maybe it’s like when Annie Potts is telling Molly Ringwald about her friend from high school in Pretty in Pink: “Once in a while she gets a terrible feeling, like something is missing. She checks her purse and her keys, she counts her kids, she goes crazy. And then she realises that…nothing is missing. She decided it was side effects from skipping the prom.”

I wonder if this strange little crisis is a side effect of not having kids, or if we’d all share these sensations regardless of our breeding choices.

I think we would. I think that given the selection, we just have a little more time to think about it – and to do something about it.

Maybe it was sparked for The Mc and I when we said good-bye to Amber, maybe it’s always been there. I think it probably has. Lurking. Waiting.

I don’t know now if filling it means getting involved with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (an organization run by a close friend of MJ’s) or what Trevor Romain did here (you remember Trevor…) or something similar that may or may not have been created yet.

What I would give for one last snapshot of me and my siblings and step-mother with my dad. If there had been a picture of us from the sitting room that day we had the talk…

It’s in my head, but it will fade with time (even if the pain doesn’t) and holding a frame in your arms to rock with while you mourn is so much different than sobbing alone with empty arms.

The point being, I suppose, that I don’t know what it looks like yet – the bigger purpose and the way to give back – but I’m open to it and looking for it. I hope you are too, and I hope you find it if you haven’t already.

For now though, I need to get in the shower. Blithering on is going to make me late for work.

All eyes are on you as you walk in with your wrong hair/wrong clothes/wrong accent. Long, painful minutes of judging have already been endured before you cross the threshold to homeroom, and you know you’ve already lost. You don’t know the right things to say, how to say them, when to say them. When it’s okay to laugh, ask questions, or be honest.

The judging doesn’t come from the God I know, it comes from the people in the pews.

My fundamental issues with organized religion may have been burned into my intellectual DNA from my father before I was in the womb: I ask questions, just as he did when he was in seminary. Beyond the students, I find myself scrunching my nose and tilting my head when my teachers speak. When the man or woman with the collective attention leaves out key bits of the stories from the bible – like when telling the story of Abraham and glossing over the fact that he didn’t trust God and bonked a young woman in his wife (Sarah)’s employ in order to secure his lineage (I know, I know, wait for next week).

I still want to know why the first chunk of the bible is chock full of men praying to God for strength to defeat (many times in long, descriptive ways) their enemies, and why this is something frequently and conveniently not mentioned in any church I’ve been to. Why would these men think God would help them destroy his children? Would He?

A people watcher by nature, it’s also and incredible struggle for me to sit in a church and not be distracted by the guy behind me who is over acting. Who saves twenty spots then talks on his cell until service starts trying to find his “friends” and get them to sit with him. Who talks too loud with said friends while I’m trying to plug in and be present. Who sings at the top of his lungs. Should I be jealous of his faith? Of his ability to let it all hang out there? Do I have the patience or tolerance to befriend him, that maybe one day he would be comfortable enough with his faith and himself that he could worship quietly like the other parishioners? Who’s to say I’m right or wrong or he’s right or wrong in the way we observe? Should I talk to him about seeking a future leading a ministry, if he’s got that kind of energy to share?

As I said – I was raised asking questions. I wasn’t encouraged to fit a mold and it was just ducky when I made waves, which works out well because that just so happens to be a natural skill I posess.

I want these people to ask questions. I want them to allow themselves to cock their heads to the side like I did when they skipped the bit about Ole Abe and The Tale of The Wandering Pelvis. I want them to get fired up and be moved and to feel it and I want them to feel like they own their spirituality. I don’t want to find myself in a pen of sheep, stepping in their muck.

Over the years I’ve had at least a hundred conversations about blind faith, about it being as for us to explain and wrap our minds around as infinity. It’s a word and a concept that you think you know, but until you’ve experienced infinity, you don’t really know what it is, do you?

So yeah. This is a good chunk of why I’m spiritually homeless, and why, right now thisveryminute, I’m perfectly okay in my cardboard box on the side of the freeway. Because really, I like it here with the God I know, and I believe that if I’m patient and I work for it, and look for it, I’ll find the perfect house for me eventually.

Maybe it’ll be the one that sparked this post, maybe it won’t. Either way I’m glad that fire was reignited, and I’m glad it got me thinking. And I’m looking forward to that house, because it will be mine and I’ll have finally come home.

I got my tattoo shortly after my 18th birthday as an ignorant “it’s my body I can do what I want (and it’s finally legal!)” statement. It was a gift from a friend I’ve since lost track of – Erica Ash, and it was inspired by another friend I’m still in touch with – Gaea – who had the same ink put on her shoulder a year or two prior. At the time, I chose to replicate it because of the message one interpretation of the ankh provides: eternal life. I knew too much about loss for someone my age and it resonated with me in a way that nearly made me vibrate. The message, and the feelings the message brought still make me close my eyes for a brief unspoiled visit…a few moments alone with gratitude and sorrow and hope.

Perched in my seat at the Larry Allen studio in Anchorage, I was told to sit sideways in what reminded me of a dentists chair and I was told to push my arm against the back of the chair so my shoulder was flexed. I did as I was told. I remember it didn’t hurt until the end, mostly it felt like someone was writing something over and over again with a ball point pen, a sensation I wasn’t unfamiliar with having just been released from high school. In those days of course we didn’t have cell phones (only the rich people had them, and they were the kind of satellite phone that had their own purses) so we’d get bored and write on ourselves. So that’s what I knew, and that’s what it felt like to me. I don’t think we were there more than an hour.

I considered other locations for it, but my shoulder seemed the most fitting since – in my infinite 18 year old wisdom I didn’t think anyone would ever see my back. A year or so after getting it I was in California, living with my dad and in a move that was *very* not me, I joined him and in the hot tub one night. Maybe I was sore, maybe I was bored. Either way, he saw the tattoo and he wasn’t thrilled, but I was his daughter and he knew what the package was all about so he let it go.

I’ve never been more horrified and relieved in rapid succession in my life.

In the years since, there have been countless occasions I wish I hadn’t put it there. My first semi-formal office Christmas party where I wore a cute little black number with spaghetti straps, and countless work functions since then. I’m fortunate that I now work for an organization that could care less about body art of any shape or form, and it’s become an non-issue in that part of my world.

The challenge with it of late is that I believe in once piece of flair at a time, and while I still love the message; there are others I’d like to add to my body but can’t bring myself to. Why? Because I have a flair compulsion. I have one piece on my truck (a breast cancer license plate), one on my body (I wear mostly solid colored clothes and usually only one piece of jewelry – frequently recently colorful earrings) and otherwise am pretty flair free. Except, of course; for my ankh.

I often wish I’d waited, that I’d been more creative or at least more of an individual, but I didn’t and I wasn’t and that’s the story of my tattoo.