Wed 1 Sep 2010
I was thinking more about yesterday’s quote - “Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world”. Sometimes I get lost in what exactly grace is. So my short hand way of reminding myself to go “Haaaaaaa” - a big noisy exhale.
Have you ever done that one in yoga class? It’s great. It makes you realize all the holding you do, silently carrying all that breath and tension. With one exhale you feel yourself let go of all the excess, the worry, the resisting. It feels like you’re left with just what you need. You’re in a state of calm. You’re going with the flow and trusting it will all work out exactly how it needs to. To me, that’s grace.
But acceptance is hard. I was thinking about my son’s recent swimming experiences. He flunked his last level of swimming not once, or twice but three times. And he loves to swim, it’s not like he was quivering in the corner, he loves it. I couldn’t accept it.
Is my kid a Failure? Is he lacking in some important way? Is he going to flunk out of school too before he makes it to junior high? You know, working through all the consequences and “what does this mean” questions which is such of waste of time because there’s no way we can know. It only increases the blood pressure.
I finally put him in a private lesson so he could pass the damn thing and take the next level with his cousin this summer. The teacher was able to get him to understand the expectations which really helped. They’re supposed to hold things like Starfish, floating on their back for 5 seconds.
Only no one had told him that, so he’d come up after say, one and a half seconds and wouldn’t pass that requirement. So this teacher told him he needed to stay on his back while she counted to five and sure enough he was like, oh ok, no big deal. And this time he passed.
So this summer he went into the next level of swimming with his cousin. I was being really careful to manage my expectations. To accept whatever was going to happen. This is his swimming experience, he’ll get it at some point, this isn’t about my timelines.
Didn’t he pass with flying colors. There were little check marks next to the long list of stuff they need to show they can do. I was shocked. And i couldn’t accept it.
Maybe the teacher has gone insane. The kids were a little wrangy waiting for their turns to swim, maybe he passed them so he wouln’t have to deal with them anymore. And then I thought no Corilee, noisy exhale time (Haaaaaa!) just accept it. Find that state of graceful calm about this too.
We went to the beach the other day and there were some awesome waves coming in. Angus and I got about waist deep and waited for the waves coming in. “Here it comes here it comes here it comes!”
We’d either stand strong or dunk underneath them. And then we’d feel the sand move under our feet as the wave sucked back down the beach. Afterwards he played in the waves himself and whether he got hit in the face or bowled over by them he had a blast. I kept an eye on him but I didn’t worry because he’s a strong little swimmer and he’ll be just fine.