From the Latin “gratus,” meaning, “pleasing or thankful.”

Defined as: “simple elegance, being courteous, or having good will,” when used as a noun, “grace” sounds delicate and dainty. Grace Kelly even comes to mind, which is just so fitting! The Greek mythological goddesses, Aglaia, Thalia, and Euphrosyne were worshiped for being the embodiment of grace and beauty.

Defined as a verb, “grace,” means to “do honor or credit to the person.” I graced my profession as a nurse for a dozen years. Oddly, just typing that makes me feel a certain hardness inside, so this definition of “grace,” feels like a bur under my saddle. I rarely see myself as graceful, especially when it comes to verb definitions.

If you ask most spiritual humans about grace, however, the definition feels so utterly comforting that you don’t desire to be graceful because of beauty or credit. In theology, grace is “spontaneous and UNMERITED” so one can’t really EARN grace from God.

When I think of the grace of God, I often forget that He knew damn well that I’d never be able to earn His unmerited favor on my own, so He sorted that part out for me. I remember God’s past unearned love bombs all the time. I often REMEMBER the past. Grace isn’t simply past tense with God, though. God will continue to see me with kindness and unearned benevolence, because I never earned it, in the first place.

Okay, so if God sees me as painfully and guttingly flawed, sarcastic, and jaded; why can’t *I* be graceful with myself??? Wait, I just figured out why. Did you see my own adjectives I used when I described myself? Those adjectives become our internal monologues and narratives.

To be graceful with one’s self, one must:

1. Admit you’re utterly flawed and always have been. Drop the ego. You suck, too.
2. Forgive yourself on a daily basis, if needed, for poor judgment, selfishness, and naivety.
3. Refuse to compare yourself to another person. Even if the person you constantly compare yourself against is who you USED to be; don’t compare yourself to others. Don’t hold yourself to former expectations that no longer match your job description or title. It’s old information. Move on. Don’t use someone else to feel your own worth.
4. Be merciful to others, as often as you can without losing your ability to be merciful to yourself. Being kind makes you kind. That’s the secret.
5. Repeat.