I’ve been meditating on the meaning of grace.

As a child, I knew the word as a kind of prayer – “Let’s bow our heads and say grace.” It was something we did before dinner with guests, or when my grandmother was staying with us. It wasn’t until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous as a teen that I first heard the word used to mean a gift, freely given and undeserved. My life, until then, had taught me nothing was given unconditionally. Grace was a frightening concept.

I complied with the requirements of a twelve-step program out of desperation. My only hope for sobriety was to trust in a power greater than myself, and not necessarily a benevolent almighty god. I just had to trust that the program designed by two hopeless drunks could help me stay sober. I turned my will and my life over to this higher power, because I didn’t know any other way.

There were times when people fell off the wagon and returned to the meetings beaten down, claiming that their “slip” had been God’s will. Once, someone referred to a friend’s death, a fisherman in his early twenties who started drinking again and died by suicide, as God’s will. The idea that I was turning my sobriety over to a God that might will me to drink in order to teach me a lesson was terrifying. I found no comfort in clinging to a lack of agency as an excuse for my personal failings. Too many friends didn’t survive their slips for me to take a chance on the theory. It was by finding my own definition of “grace”, one day at a time, that I came to believe that my higher power doesn’t prescribe cruelty for personal edification.

I miss the mark on a regular basis. Learning to acknowledge my mistakes and forgive myself has helped to deepen my understanding of grace and its lessons in compassion and unconditional love. There is also an acknowledgement of my, our, innate worthiness. Grace may be a gift, given freely, but I no longer believe it is undeserved. We are each deserving of grace not only because of our potential, but because we are made of the same stardust, have the same elements coursing through our veins, and generations of trauma molded into our DNA.

My definition of “grace” continues to evolve. I’ve come to believe that we are all perfectly flawed creations-in-progress, filled with a multiplying grace that may take a lifetime to understand.

And that is a gift freely given.

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