Taking Grace on the Road

I've been thinking a lot lately about living a more graceful life.  Not graceful as in less clumsy- although I did drop a pretty large jar of coconut oil yesterday on my foot and could potentially benefit from a more graceful life.  But that's not the type of grace I'm talking about. Nor am I referring to Gracie, my daughter (in case the title misled any of you). I'm actually talking about grace grace. You know. The spiritual kind. The kind that allows one to let go of negative emotions in lieu of compassion, empathy, kindness, and understanding.

 Maybe it's been motherhood or maybe it's just been my mid to late thirties, but somewhere in the last few years I've become much more wary of anger and judgement and much more aware of grace.  Maybe that's just a natural part of getting older. (By the way, are you guys familiar with that Ed Sheeran song that says something about a woman's face "crumbling like pastries"? Lately that line goes through my head everytime I see my reflection.  Seems to me that I'm going to need a big dose of grace just to survive the aging process.)

Anyway, I decided in the last few months that a tiny stockpile of grace could only be a good thing, so I started consciously trying to practice it.  Instead of giving in to my short fuse, I tried to step back and offer kindness or compassion in place of anger.  I still messed up every day, but for the most part it was good.  My kids and husband were targets of my anger less often. I felt less stress.  I hated my white tile floors less.  Zen was practically oozing out of my pores.  But my friends, I made a fatal error.  I began this quest for grace during high season out here in the desert.

Let me tell you about season, for those of you who don't already know.

For the most part, the months of January to May are the best time of the year out here- and I think every senior citizen in every snow region from Washington to New York City to Canada  knows it.  They all come and infiltrate the desert with their expensive town cars, poor driving skills, and sense of entitlement. I've complained written about them before here in this post.
I am not lying when I say that currently one in every five cars out here have an out of state license plate.
That means that 20% of the people that I'm on the road with daily have NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE DOING OR WHERE THEY ARE GOING.

(Sorry for yelling, but it felt necessary to convey the frustrating experience that is driving during season.)

(Also, it's probably clear from my tone that I haven't really mastered grace in the long term.  I can only manage grace in the moment, but that's a start. Right?)
  
Practicing grace on the road during high season out here in the desert turned out to be a bigger challenge than I was prepared for.  I mean, I did good for the first few days.  For example, when I saw a car turn left onto the wrong side of the divider, instead of marveling at the driver's stupidity, I had the presence of mind to pray for his/her safety.

When a car cut me off by turning right in front of me even though there was no one behind me and they could've saved me the need to brake wildly by waiting a half a second, I was able to conjure up some empathy by remembering that my own grandfather is on the road and may make the same mistakes.  I would want other drivers to offer him grace.

I do confess, when someone honked at me because I stopped for schoolchildren in a crosswalk, I did roll down my window and ask him if he'd prefer if I'd run the pedestrians over- but I managed to do so in a joking manner with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.

And when a driver with Washington plates failed to move until the last second at a green left turn arrow, thus leaving everyone behind him to sit through another red, I was the only one of five cars who did not honk at him.  I figured the other honkers spoke for me.

However.

Turns out I have a limit. (I say that as if it's a surprise.)

The other week I was picking the kids up from school.  Nowadays I avoid the Devil's Lot by picking them up on a corner in the neighborhood across the street.  I had stopped for a truck in front of me who had double parked to let his kids get in. Upon beginning re-acceleration (key word there, as I had just put my foot back on the gas), I passed a young lady parked on the side.  She was getting her baby out of the back seat.

And that's when it happened. She yelled at me to slow down.

(This is the part where, if I was telling you this story face to face I would expect you to say something like "Oh, NO she didn't!" just so I could say "Oh YES she did!" back.)

(Let's pretend that we had that exchange.)

OH YES SHE DID!  It was too much.  After weeks (WEEKS!) of biting my tongue and being witness to countless numbers of idiots drivers making deadly mistakes on the road, she was going to yell at ME when I hadn't even hit 20mph on my odometer?

Not caring that my kids were in the car, I slammed on my brakes.  I rolled down my window.  Bug eyed, I leaned out and yelled "LADY!!!!!!  I WASN'T EVEN GOING 20 MPH!"

And she started screeching back at me about how there was a school across the street and how I needed to slow down.

So I screeched back "I KNOW THERE'S A SCHOOL ACROSS THE STREET!  I AM HERE PICKING UP MY CHILDREN!  YOU DON'T GET TO YELL AT ME TO SLOW DOWN!  I'M THE ONE WHO YELLS AT PEOPLE TO SLOW DOWN!  ME!  NOT YOU! ME!"

Those words actually came out of my mouth.  I'm not proud.

The good new is that she probably didn't hear me in her determination to drown me out by repeatedly screeching "Slow down!"  in the same manner that little kids cover their ears and shout "LALALALLALA" when they don't want to hear something.

I wish I could say that that's when the absurdity of the situation hit me, but it wasn't. (That didn't happen until I actually sat down to write this.)  I did have the presence of mind however, to realize that in that moment, I was being a terrible role model to my kids.  I guess if I really thought about it, I would've realized that I was also being a terrible role model to that new mom as well, but that's another topic.

And while I was still angry enough at her to imagine scenarios where I got to tell her off and say things like "Welcome to parenthood lady!  You and your baby against the big bad world.  Get a grip." (Wouldn't that have been SO satisfying?), I also realized that I was in the middle of a big grace fail.  Huge.

And there's the thing about grace.  It doesn't require perfection.  In fact, imperfection is it's starting point.  So you get to start over.  And over.  And over.  And over again, until you learn the lesson grace is trying to teach you.

So, I took a deep breath and chastised myself for yelling at a mom with a newborn carrier.  I am truly ashamed of that.  And I remembered back to when I was pregnant and waddling through parking lots, how offended I would get towards the drivers who zipped past me.  Maybe they weren't going faster than 20 either, but to someone who was new at trying to protect an tiny little life, it didn't matter.  I felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, and felt like there should be more people working on my side.

Between that and the fact that I realized she was the reciepient of some pent up anger I'd been feeling towards the other idiots on the road  snowbirds, I was able to clear my head.  In fact, I saw her cross in front of me a few weeks later in the Target parking lot and the urge to put my car in park and rev my engine at her was very, very small.

Thank you, grace.

For my desert readers, approximately 75 days until the end of season.  That's 75 opportunities grace allows us to start over, and I have a feeling I'll be using up every one of those opportunities.