Somehow, today it happened.
Today was the day.
I dealt with it.
Several months back, I found an old small cooler that had some things inside of it. I don’t know how long they had been there. Whatever was inside the cooler was there long enough to turn black, grow fuzz, and smell rancid.

Upon finding this treasure, I shouted out to my husband: “This cooler is disgusting! Let’s just throw it in the garbage.”
“No”, he says.
“We will deal with it”.
And deal with it, we did not. For another six months.
It sat in the garage. Collecting more stinky black stuff.
In fact, I forgot about it.
For the most part.
Oh, I suppose from time to time I would glance over at the airtight Coleman cooler, shudder, and move on.
I guess in the back of my mind, I always knew it was there. Nagging.
Left, undealt with.
Until today, when necessity cried out for me to “move a few things around” in my garage.
The Little Cooler resurfaced.
I opened the cooler for the first time in six months. I don’t know why I opened it, but I opened it. I scooped out the junk with a plastic shovel, emptying its contents into a plastic bag. Then I rinsed the darn thing out with the hose.
And the Little Cooler, who once held so much power–to cool, to preserve, and to decay–and most of all gross me out–
Lost it’s power. Why?
I cannot say for sure.
Maybe, because I just opened it.
Maybe, it was because I just thought, for the first time in six months, “I can do this.”
Whatever came over me in the form of “just do it” is an enigma, still, today.
And that, my friend is how grace is.
There is no exact formula.
For me, it tends to happen in a moment. One could argue grace works eventually–over time. Maybe it’s both.
I never really know how I get there.
Try as I might (and Lord knows I have) to force grace into my nice little time frame, and it never works.
It comes when the heavens line up with–what? Certainly no striving of my own accord.
It just comes.
I remember the day I decided to forgive the one person I thought I couldn’t.
I had tried and tried to “forgive” for a very long time. Nothing.
Then, one day, it just happened.
One thing I do know:from the moment I am paralyzed by lack of inertia–to the moment I can act or think in a way that super-exceeds my once perceived limitted human capacity–something supernatural occurs.
Grace.
Sometimes, it sidles up real slow and cunning…and sometimes, it comes like a cool burst of air that makes me gasp.
Either way, the moment I realize its gift,
I love to sink into it.
Because it is so totally
and completely
who You are.