How Sweet the Sound

Someone in my family stepped on the computer and broke it, so I've been MIA for a week. Not that it would have made much a difference in my blogging habits. Still. I felt I should explain. I am, however, not going to out the member of my family who stepped on the computer, because, we all know, it could have just as easily been me. In this family, there is grace. And a lot of shame. Mostly shame. But also, grace.

Grace all over the damn place, in fact. Grace all over the walls, where we found out Crayola isn't strictly in the "washable" marker biz. They've branched out, and now they come in an array of unwashables. But like I said, there is grace here. And so we won't be sending Harri to live with unwashed hippies. At least not until he expresses the desire to do so.

There's also grace in our carpet. That's where grace likes to grind itself into the fibers and create a crusty imprint of itself. To remind us that blind, klutzy people should just get laminate floors already. Or maybe they should just stop bringing large glasses of Coke into the living room. But also to remind us of grace. There is forgiveness, even where it is undeserved. Even when it leaves a stain.

There's grace in the sink, and in the laundry basket, and in the car, and in the yard. There's grace on report cards that report high marks for reading, but also a question about whether or not we as parents even know how to count past fifty ourselves. (We do. We just don't think anyone uses math after high school anyway.)

I love my family. I love that we can make mistakes here. I love that we don't have to be perfect counters or know what "stay on the paper" means. We can fall on expensive computers, we can spill our cups, we can forget to buy milk, we can .... Well, you get the idea. Graceful? No. And that's why there's grace. Unmerited, unsolicited, understood, amazing grace.