Last night I got stupid. Lots of Crown. Not very much Diet Coke. Lots of laughs and fun times. Not very many of which I remember.
I’ve never met blackout drunk MatthewBlakeAtkinson, but heard rumors of his existence. He doesn’t sound that great. I feel like king of the world a few cocktails in, but I have trouble tapping the brakes. Once I get started I almost always drink until the bar closes.
I have this feeling of invincibility. I try to make friends with everyone and think I’m a barrel of monkeys, but maybe, like Eric said, I just look stupid. On some level I think I’m loved because of my drinking, but actually I’m loved in spite of it.
Which is pretty fucking cool.
I was having a hard time getting my head straight this morning…physically and mentally. I felt like hell, but also was giving myself a healthy dose of guilt. My mind was racing. I couldn’t sleep. But, then I thought about the moment I had with the boy the other day. I got to hug him through his tears…and tell him I loved him and that I was sorry.
And there was something in that which helped me give myself grace. I drank too much…again. So should I sit around all day moping and giving myself a hard time? No. Fucking get back up. And when I did I wrote a note to one of the friends I was with last night talking about that Eric Roberts quote. She had the nerve to tell me that I’m 100% awesome all of the time. I needed that, because I’m still learning to give myself grace.
It’s hard to shake the legalism that I grew up with. But, I tell the kids I love them WHILE they’re screwing up, while they’re doing great, while they’re sad and angry and everything in between. And I need to love myself the same way and give myself grace.
The thing I have a hard time with is thinking that grace will have a limit. At some point, I’ll go too far and even grace will turn his back on me. But, I think I’m slowly learning…and I mean SLOWLY learning…that no one is ever beyond redemption.
“I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth,” sayeth the Tom Waits in “Down There By the Train.” The man who betrayed Jesus and the man who killed the President who freed the slaves...there’s grace even for them down there by the train.
There are people all around us in our daily lives who have fucked up huge. You know what I did once? I wrote my friend the stripper what amounted to a love letter. It was me trying to figure out my thoughts for her via writing and I didn’t plan to give it to her. But, it was clear from the letter that I had strong feelings for her.
I was still kicked out of the house on Christmas Eve that year. I arranged to get some time in the house with my kids and family while my wife spent time with her family. I accidentally left my coat with the love letter to a stripper at the house. The note fell out of my pocket and my wife read it.
Happy fucking Christmas. I read it again the next day and can’t imagine what that must have felt like for her to read it. I felt awful. I was not very popular the next day. Christmas day. My sister gave me shit. And I deserved it. I didn’t get to see my kids. My Christmas dinner was a hot pocket from Quick Trip…by myself.
So, I can relate to Down There By the Train. I don’t know why I’ve experienced so much grace, but man alive do I need it. We all do. And no one is beyond redemption. Not even you. :) What did you do or have done to you? That thing that you think you can’t tell anyone. What if I meet you down there by the train and we start to get some healing. Let it out. Grace can’t do its job if our shit stays secret. Don’t waste the gift that grace is.
“Your grace is wasted in your face. Your boldness stands alone among the wreck. Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck.” Mumford and Sons.
That line hit me today. I felt like I didn’t deserve grace for last night’s stupidity. But, yeah, see, that’s kind of the point of grace. We don’t deserve it. But, it’s free for the taking anyway. While I was beating myself up I was going in circles…biting my own neck.
But what did my mother teach me in our last talk? That she regretted a ton of stuff from her life, most of all the line of thinking that if she was a good girl everything would be just fine. She needed grace. And she got it when she most needed it.
That’s kind of how grace works. It has really good timing…showing up when you need it most. I loved reading the Count of Monte Cristo,because grace showing up when all hope is lost happens repeatedly in the story. I keep needing grace. And it keeps being there for me. It’s as reliable as my ability to fuck things up. It covers for the stupid. Thank God.
Grace treats everyone the same. There's no your sins are worse than my sins. There's no eye for an eye. There's no tooth for a tooth. You fuck up? Great, me too. Now let's move the fuck on and live some life, not carrying around the burden of our missteps.
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