Grace

Definition: Grace 1) refinement of movement; 2) courteous goodwill

I have a few blogs that I follow, most of them cancer-related. Some of them not. Last year, I stumbled onto one while looking for instructions on making home-made Christmas decorations that turned out to be, in part, a cancer blog. The person writing is a young woman in her early 20s who was diagnosed with stage III esophageal cancer - a person infused with so much grace while dealing with a serious illness I have never seen before, nor since.

I have never been a graceful person. As a child, I regularly ran into, fell off of, or stumbled over things that other kids seemed to negotiate with ease. I swore off of high heels in my 20s because they were just too dangerous, i.e. embarrassing, for me to risk tottering around on.

Emotionally, I am not a graceful person either. Although able to keep my emotions in check the vast majority of the time, when they do erupt it is a dastardly, ugly thing to see. I cry, flail, cuss and generally am as UN-graceful as a person can be.

Even so, I long (no really - LONG) to have the strength, fortitude, faith, whatever it is - to walk through this perilous life with the spiritual grace possessed by this young woman.

Yet I continue to totter, as if on high heels, through this life and this disease, stumbling and flailing, running into, falling off of, and stumbling over the things that others negotiate with ease.

Some things never change.