GRACE ALWAYS WINS

                                          GRACE ALWAYS WINS
                                                                      T. Wieland Allen

   Do you remember the old saying, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?"  My answer to that many years ago when I was a child was yes, God hears.  That tidbit of information came from one of my grandmothers, one who was quick to remind us sisters that God is always present watching to catch us in a sin.  She was my grandmother on my mother's side, and she is the one who always gave my sister and me a look of disapproval when we went to the movie on Sunday afternoons after Sunday School and morning church and before we went to Training Union, choir practice, night church and fellowship after that.  That grandmother was the member of a fundamentalist church who takes the Bible word for word, without any spiritual interpretation.  Her looks of disapproval were usually saved for when she visited us for the weekends from her home 60 miles away when we could hardly wait to go to the movie after morning church and lunch on Sundays.  She never scolded us or chided us for doing something that was so obviously sinful to her as spending an hour and a half at the movie theater even though we had already been to church for two to three hours in the morning with the anticipation of going back to church in the evening and being in some kind of service for another five hours.  That was our usual Sunday routine, so she only gave to us a disapproving look, not any lectures with words that stung. I was grateful for that.  However, she made her feelings known.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
   We had another grandmother who was raised in a liturgical church which is more liberal, one who believes in God's forgiveness, so they just have fun in life without any emphasis on guilt for sins.  They just go tell the priest that they have sinned, he tells them that they are forgiven and that's that.  That grandmother was the fun one.  She lived in a state on the west coast, which is thought of as being more liberal, which to some people unfortunately means sinful.  That grandma would visit occasionally and she would play poker with her adult sons, and then at 11:00 p.m. they would all get up from the poker table and go to mass and get forgiven, going on their merry way with no guilt and no lingering condemnation.  There was always laughter when she was around, lots of talking, laughing and even some beer shared with her sons.  They were a happy group for sure.  
   One of the many times my sister and I went to the movie theater after attending morning church and then having a large Sunday lunch, when we left the movie theater, lo and behold, there was a priest from the same denomination as my fun loving grandmother coming out of the movie theater.  I'm sure he had officiated at his church on that very Sunday morning.  I wondered how he could go to a movie on Sunday, which was sinful to the other grandmother with the disapproving look.  You think I wasn't conflicted in my young mind, wondering who was right, the disapproving grandmother or the fun grandmother?   I struggled with that conundrum for years.  
   On one occasion that the fun grandmother was visiting in our home, my sister and I were playing outside before going to a Sunday movie.  I had my dime for the movie in the pocket of my church dress since the movie was only nine cents.  I had been doing cartwheels and I suddenly remembered the dime in the pocket of my dress.  You guessed it, when I felt inside of the pocket the dime was gone.  I looked all around the place where I was doing cart wheels and there was no dime to be found anywhere.  My fun grandmother saw me looking under blades of grass and she asked me what I was so seriously seeking.  I told her I had lost my dime, that I needed the dime to go to the movie.  She told me to pray to Saint Anthony, who is the saint of lost things.
    WHOA, wait a minute!  That grandmother was telling her little fundamentalist granddaughter to pray to somebody other than Jesus?  That didn't compute in my narrow denominational mind which had been listening to preachers and teachers for at least three or four hours on every Sunday and very often of Wednesday nights for all those years as a youth.  Nobody ever told me to pray to a saint.  Somehow I knew, even at eight years of age, that that would not fit in with my own church training.
   After continuing to search and even silently praying to Jesus to help me find my dime, there was no luck.  The fun grandmother told me that I might just try asking Saint Anthony because finding things for people who lose them is the job that God gave to him in heaven.  Reluctantly, I prayed to Saint Anthony kind of silently because I was fearful that I might be struck dumb for betraying Jesus.  I opened my eyes, looked down in the grass under my feet, and there was my shiny dime staring at me like it had been waiting for me to find him.  
   Was it a miracle?  Of course, even though, in my church at the time, praying for miracles was never done because those kind of phenomenons went away, we were taught, after Jesus Christ went to heaven to live with God. Going to heaven after we died was the only miracle we were taught that we were going to ever experience, and that was a great reward for going to church those many times every Sunday for all of those years.    
    As you can imagine, my mind was thoroughly confused after that event.  I kind of weighed things in my childish mind about who was right, the God of the grandmother with the disapproving look or the God of the grandmother who had faith in what I thought was a dead man helping me find my dime?  My religious thinking was fighting to get outside of its rigid enclosure, all of that over a dime.
   Anyway, that is my history about wrestling with the difference between forgiveness and judgment.  Now being an octogenarian, My spiritual walk is strictly along the freedom loving lines of forgiveness and definitely not judgment. However, occasionally the mindset of judgment secretly creeps into my thoughts because it was so effectively and numerously drilled into my mind as a child.  
   Now for an example that relates to the saying that I wrote about the tree in the forest and if it falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?  Not too long ago, I had an incident happen to me where that old judgment from years ago spoke a loud condemning thought into my mind.  After my loving husband died, I determined to live in my home for many years, at least as long as I can.  I decided that there are things that are preventable that can save me from problems if I will be careful and not take any unnecessary chances.  One is that I decided that I needed to always turn on the light in a dark room before entering it, even though I know where everything is located in every room in my home.  By experience I learned that things do get put out of place easily and if there is no light in a room then there is a danger of stumbling over something, falling and breaking a bone.  So that has been my self made rule for myself, to always make sure before entering a dark room that I turn the light on in the dark room.  I can truthfully say that I am usually very faithful to my self made rule and I have saved myself lots of problems by just always taking a few seconds and turning on a light before entering a dark room.
   Also, adding to that tidbit of wisdom, I had also decided during the Christmas holidays to turn on the outside lights before going into an even slightly darkened outside yard from the house.  At Christmastime I had put some lights up on some low places so as not to have to get on a ladder.  I have been true to my cautious rule and I have turned on the outside porch light before stepping outside on the porch to turn on or off the outside Christmas lights so that I don't stumble over something and have a bad fall.  (I can feel that you're ahead of me on this story.)
   One particular night I did not turn on the porch lights when I went outside to turn off the decorative Christmas lights, surmising that I was only going to the edge of the porch in order to turn the lights off.  Sure enough I safely turned off the decorative lights and then I noticed that a neighbor had put up some beautiful lights so I quickly decided to take a few steps off of the porch to enable myself to more easily see the neighbor's full display on his house.  I walked the eight steps  to the end of the sidewalk and carefully stepped down off of one step to see the beautiful display more clearly.  It was beautiful.  He had done a great job with multicolored lights twinkling everywhere on his house.   
   Remember, the problem was that I had neglected to turn on the porch lights, only intending to walk to the end of the porch, so in returning to the porch in the dark I  forgot to step up onto the one step that I had so gracefully and safely maneuvered which enabled me to see the neighbor's display.  Suddenly down, down, down I went onto the sidewalk, landing on my left knee, the accompanying elbow and my left hip on the rock studded sidewalk.  I yelled a word that happens to only occasionally escape from my mouth under trying situations when I am alone.  As I not so graciously fell, I yelled, "OH, S--------------------------T," very, very loudly into the peaceful darkness and pristine stillness of the night.  The second word seemed to hang onto every molecule of moisture in the cool air on that quiet December night, growing louder and louder as it reverberated in every direction.  Somehow, that particular word did not seem to fit with the Christmas card perfect appearance of our street with houses that were beautifully decorated and smoke pouring from the chimneys straight up to heaven, like a painting.  Nada, no fit, not one bit and not at all.  The word was so loudly yelled and with such perfect eloquence that I fully expected every door to open and people to come pouring out with disapproving looks, like Grandmother's,  to witness who had said what is commonly regarded as a curse word on a night in a world where the birth of the Prince of Peace was being widely celebrated.  
   I laid there on the sidewalk waiting, only mildly injured with a few scrapes on my knee and I was thankful that all of the Christmas lights on the houses around me remained steady with no bright porch lights suddenly appearing and people rushing to find out who had blasphemed the perfect picture of a peaceful world with such a loud "S--------------------t" piercing the peaceful Christmas card picture that our neighborhood presented to the world.  I carefully and very slowly, considering my age, raised myself up off of my sidewalk and walked slowly up the sidewalk, onto the porch and into my house, thanking God all the way that the grandmother with the disapproving look was not there to again judge me with a disapproving look.  I somehow knew that the fun loving grandmother would have laughed.  Maybe not when we were outside but she would have collapsed in laughter when we closed the front door and left the world in its picture perfect condition with that word still hanging somewhere in the atmosphere.    
    Now, I tell you this in my own defense when I tell you that I read an article in a magazine several years ago that said not to feel guilty when you say an inappropriate word during stressful times.  The article quoted a scientist who said that he hooked a few people up to brain machines, put the people under a stressful situation, and coached them to, at the proper time of approaching danger, say their favorite inappropriate expletive.  He found that when a person occasionally says a profanity during stressful times that it showed up on the brain waves in a positive way, as if saying the word robbed the flight or fight syndrome of the ability to flood the person's cells with negative hormones.  
   So that article solved a problem for me.  I no longer feel guilty because when there is no one around to hear me in stressful situations.  It's just God and me.  He understands and He acknowledges that science of the human body gave me permission to relieve the stress that accompanied my misstep.  Even though the loudly screamed "s-----------------t" word reverberated in the still, quiet night, it was like when the tree falls in the forest, there was no one around to judge the tree for falling and there was no one around to judge me for falling and screaming a word that is a slang word for the product of a necessary body function.  Like I said, I felt calm and peaceful, free from guilt because there was no one there to judge me with a disapproving look.  God forgave me immediately and I forgave myself immediately.
   I am a little sore from the fall and I only have a slightly swollen kneecap with three small abrasions where I fell on the rough sidewalk.  My body is aching with soreness as it had absorbed the shock from falling. There are no broken bones and no one to whom I have to apologize, just like the tree in the forest.  That experience makes me wonder if the tree in the forest on the way down shouts, "Oh---------------My------------God."
   It's so freeing not to be judgmental of myself or other people.  I have always said that I don't do guilt and I don't do windows.  I truly learned that lesson from my two grandmothers.  I know that God's ears can take a few inappropriate words if saying them during stressful times helps relieve the human body of the hormonal output that can do damage to the body of the speaker.       
   I can thank both grandmothers.  The one with the disapproving look was only mirroring her own church's teaching of guilt just like the other grandmother always mirrored her church's teaching of grace which she mirrored in her life.
    May we all be full of grace with ourselves and with each other on every occasion.  Grace extended to everyone, however it's expressed, always negates that damaging hormonal output of the human body when we are tempted to judge someone or feel judged.  Extending grace to everyone adds healthy years to our lives if we don't allow those looks of disapproval to emerge from the past and continue to condemn us.  The grandmother with the disapproving look never intended to leave that as her legacy with me.  I saw the contrast in the other grandmother, the one who taught me about love and grace.  Judgment stops with Me.  I intend to never leave it as a legacy with my own grandkids.  I intend to be the fun grandmother to them, always giving them looks of love and approval. I want that to be my own legacy.  After all, it's God's legacy to His children