As I worked on trumpeter swan photos that I made this past week it struck me that many of the photos did not show off the grace that one expects from swans. In fact I began to wonder if the phrase
Graceful as a Swan
might be a bit of a stretch. Still I love these big beautiful birds whether they are awkward or graceful or a little bit of both. Aren’t we all a little bit of both? The people I love most are perfectly imperfect, full of beauty and grace and at the same time awkward and unkempt some of the time. Everyone has their challenges and difficulties.
The other day I was watching some wood ducks glide across the pond behind our house. From what I saw they were effortlessly moving quickly through the water. But then I imagined what kind of paddling they must be doing beneath the surface of the water to be moving so fast. Some of us are like those wood ducks, making the way we live our lives look so easy and smooth, while on the inside something much different may be going on. Others don’t bother (or can’t) hide the difficulties they are experiencing.
Grace and Peace No Matter What
No matter how easy or smooth your life may be or how difficult and challenging it may be, I hope that you find grace and peace in allowing yourself to be however you are. I don’t know who first said this to me, but it has become one of my touchstones that helps me accept whatever comes my way — “it is what it is.”
I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kind of things. Also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog and scootch, on the floor, in the silence, in the dark.
― Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
I believe that letting others see the unvarnished unrehearsed unedited me (some of the time) might be helpful to someone somewhere sometime. While I don’t go out of my way to bare my soul all the time, I also don’t hide it when I’m struggling or having difficulties. I figure that it might be a kind of relief to someone to see someone else who is as clueless or stressed or uncool on the outside as that person may be feeling on the inside.
Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.
―
My wish for you this day is that you may be as graceful as a swan (which isn’t always graceful you know)!
May you walk in beauty.
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