Unraveling What Grace Is

If you are following along on Facebook and Instagram, I just revealed the front cover design of Unraveling: Coming Out and Back together. Just 40 days until book publishing! On Friday, I will share the back cover and some beautiful endorsements from some beautiful people. Today I share more about the poem “Grace is” and the story and fabric behind it.

Grace was a gentle and powerful presence in this world. She was actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement not only in Detroit, but also on a national level. She was a Freedom Rider and activist. She modeled peace and breathed justice. She was compassionate and kind, and spoke truth in ways that hard hearts could receive. And on my journey, she was the perfect personification of God’s grace, especially at a time when it seemed like it was taken away.

In December 2016, I preached a sermon at my home church, where I first publicly came out as lesbian, and shared the decisions I had made in connection to surrendering my credentials and leaving ministry in the United Methodist Church. Grace and her husband Ray were there that Sunday. After worship, Grace and I stood alone together. There were little words and many emotions. She shared her recent cancer diagnosis. Ray joined us. And they so lovingly assured me “as long as we are here, we will not let you fall.” None of us knew what that meant.

In mid-February shortly before my official surrender of credentials, Grace was admitted to the hospital. Ray called saying, “we have a request.” Grace was struggling with pain and anxiety. Ray was spending long days with her, and they wondered if I might be willing to stay over some nights. Her medical team was supportive of this idea.

I would arrive to the hospital just before the end of visiting hours. The three of us would talk about the day and then Ray would head home. I’d get as comfortable as possible in a hospital lounge chair. Grace would say she was tired, and start to close her eyes, and then slowly begin a conversation. In small, short snippets she told me about her life, loves, hopes, dreams, and regrets. Her beliefs and convictions. Her faith and doubts. Her joy for living. Her questions about death.

I didn’t see her for several nights leading up to my visit to the Bishop’s office. That was one thing we didn’t talk much about. She knew it was coming. She knew I was deeply grieving and battling with sadness and shame. She knew the hopes I held for a more whole and authentic life. She remembered the very first sermon I ever gave, and reminded me of my own message about the wild ways God uses the people society overlooks to change the world.

My first overnight back with Grace after my ecclesial unraveling was heavy and somber for all of us. Grace wasn’t getting any better. She was sleeping soundly for the first time in many days. Ray was wrestling to accept the gravity of her diagnosis. I watched him fight to keep his composure and push back tears. Sitting next to him on that uncomfortable bench, I put my hand on his arm and nervously offered, “maybe it’s time to start thinking about a plan for how this ends?”

Putting his other hand on mine, he whispered, “I heard what happened. I know you don’t have a title anymore, but you will always be a minister. No one can take that away.”

Grace would be transferred to another hospital, where I would spend one last night in her presence. The conversation was more sporadic. More spiritual. More soft. More sacred. Most visits I would stay until Ray returned around 8 am. But it was a Sunday and he was hoping to go to church that morning, and bring another dear friend to see Grace after. I told him I’d stay until he arrived, whenever that was.

Grace was cold that day. She kept asking for more blankets and to be covered up. After a nurse brought in a heated blanket, she asked “do you think you could wrap me up nice and tight?” As best and gently as I could, I wrapped the warm linen around her shoulders and her neck. She said, “wrap my head too.”

I did. And then I said, “you look like you’re in a cocoon.”

She smiled and motioned me close. In the strongest voice she’d had in weeks she said, “you’ve been my angel. We couldn’t have done this without you.”

I smiled back saying, “Grace you’ve been mine. I would have given up without you.”

It was a moment that unraveled like a life time. A moment that can never be taken from me.

Those were our last words. But not the end of her presence in my life. The death of my friend Grace was an eternal reminder of the permanent presence of the grace of God. A grace that cannot be surrendered. Or controlled. A grace that flows. And floats. And meanders with us through all the seasons of our lives. A grace that is an elegantly wrapped gift arriving the moment we are born. That warms us like heated blankets as we die. And amazingly, Grace died on her birthday.

This Lent, as we wander our way closer to Holy Week, to the grave realities of suffering, death and grief, I find comfort and even joy remembering Grace wrapped up tightly in a linen cocoon. Preparing for her last breath. Anticipating her resurrection, a journey she imagined as flying like geese over the lake back to where she ran in fields of grass as a child.

Grace and I never talked about my robe, but that linen hospital blanket resembled it in more ways than one. Unraveling the threads of that clergy robe, and all its many seams, has also been a transformative journey. A painful one. A liberating one. A lonely one. A holy one. Preparing me for this new life and calling, and unraveling what grace is.

To read the poem “Grace is” make sure to order your copy of the book, available April 23rd. All those links coming soon!

Water-fully Yours,
Rebecca & 10 Camels