Last year, I found myself saying to someone that, “I’ve never had two seniors graduating at the same time, one going through the process for a service academy appointment, while I was also a teacher of seniors while working a side job(s) and producing a yearbook and parenting other kids and being a wife.”
I was saying that to explain some balls I had dropped, and some plates that had stopped spinning. Was it presented as an excuse? I guess it kind of was, and could be taken as such, but it made me step back and think to myself how true it was. I had done several of those things before, and I had already parented three seniors through to graduation, but none of the times before compared to doubling everything AND helping Angela with all the service academy hoops.
And it wasn’t that I messed up on purpose, or even that I took on too much, it was merely that I didn’t KNOW what would prove to be too much because it was my first time.
I’ve actually thought about it a lot since. We had never collectively lived through a pandemic before. I know people dealing with chronic or terminal diagnoses who have never lived with something like that before. Some people in my circle have never suffered tremendous losses and grieved loved ones before. And it’s not all bad things, either.
The good, the great, can still be complicated when you’re a novice at them. Some people have never worked this fabulous new job before. Some have never had a spouse to factor into everything before. First time parents have never adjusted to a baby’s schedule before. Second time parents have never had to figure out how to shower while a toddler and an infant are looked after.
Think for a second about how many things in our lives, just today or this week or month or year, we are doing for the first time. All of us.
And maybe, just maybe, we could all be a little more understanding of and patient with each other.
Several years ago, I saw a quote that said, “May grace be my first response.”
I often get around to grace, but I’m ashamed to say that it is seldom my first response. I told my students all of first semester, this schedule is brand new to me too. I’ll give you grace but I need it in return. And we did, all of us, because we made it a point to ask for it, to be aware of the intentionality of grace.
So maybe as we go through this life, it would do us good to remember all the things that people are doing for the very first time, and grace can be our first response instead of the one we get to after damage has already been done.
