On Grace
I had it all figured out. I was going to quit my well-paid corporate job in Amsterdam and go to Sicily to complete a poetry workshop with a prestigious American writing school. After that, I was going to go and finish a (bestselling, obvs) book of poems from the tropical lushness of Bali, where I had been accepted to complete a month-long sabbatical with an organisation for creatives and individuals looking to shake up their status quo. I would then move back to the UK as an award-winning poet (and kick-ass surfer with a killer tan) where I would train to become a Writing Therapist and coach, and hopefully meet the perfect man to settle down with. I was finally embarking on the quest to become the best and shiniest version of myself that had so long felt out of reach. I love a good plan, and this plan was perfect!
Only it didn’t quite work out like that. In (chilly) Sicily (where I had only packed summer dresses) I realised pretty quickly that my poetry needed a lot of work. I also realised, after being provided with three meals a day of bread or pasta or bread and pasta or pizza and bread and pasta (etc.) that I had a relatively brutal gluten intolerance. It made my face erupt in angry volcanic acne, stopped me from sleeping, gave me agonising belly ache and precipitated the onset of what felt like an insidious and familiar depression. I called my Dad crying during one of the class breaks, explaining that I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue with the Bali plans when I felt / looked / was so unwell. Dad urged me not to do anything that didn’t feel right, but so caught up was my ego in my Master Plan that I decided I should and therefore would carry on to Bali.
Only it didn’t quite work out like that. In the four-day turnaround between the Sicily workshop and Bali jaunt, Mount Batur (the active volcano in Bali) suddenly looked set to erupt. There was a flurry of alarmist media that I would devour while lying lethargically in the bath, and multiple warnings about the potential dangers of travel should the volcano erupt. I discovered that the airline I was flying with was offering a full refund because of the seriousness of the situation, and after four agonising days of changing my mind every seven minutes, I eventually decided to cancel the trip – and put myself to bed in tears.
After several weeks of trying to make up for my disappointment with a series of other vaguely unsatisfactory plans, I realised I was in need of some proper income and ended up going back to the corporate job I had so triumphantly left, now sheepish and poorly. I even moved from a freelance contract to a permanent contract, thereby decreasing my independence and my income and increasing my already rampant self-loathing.
Three days later I found myself at the company’s paltry Christmas party, at my lowest and most dejected. I couldn’t understand how my plans had fallen so flat on their face and kept thinking of the ‘other’ me in the alternate reality and what she would have been doing at that moment. Sipping from a coconut from on a lush tropical beach surrounded by inspiring entrepreneurs, probably. Rather than glugging horrible white wine in a strange freezing warehouse just outside of Utrecht surrounded by overly-excited interns. As a result of this incessant internal punishment I was putting myself through, I made the most of that horrible white wine and ended up making the unlikely (read: drunk) decision to continue to an afterparty with a bunch of people I didn’t really know. And then I ended up kissing a colleague. Could I sink any lower? Getting drunk at a Christmas party and kissing a colleague on the dance floor? What a cliché.
Only it didn’t quite work out like that. Because that colleague turned out to be the love of my life and the exact person I needed for a spectrum of reasons. He has given me more and taught me more and healed me more than I ever could have hoped for. We now have two gorgeous daughters together and a life full of laughter and love.
(Side note: in reference to the series of other vaguely unsatisfactory plans that I made in lieu of going to Bali, one of them was a detox yoga retreat in Ibiza which would have been disastrous (I don’t deal well with Hanger) had I not met one of my now-best-friends there, who also happens to live five minutes from me in Amsterdam. And in reference to the moving from a freelance to a permanent contract, this enabled me to buy an apartment which freelancing never would have done and give myself the base that I needed to feel settled and safe.)
It’s a slightly lengthy and meandering tale, one which you could see from a number of different perspectives. A too-long anecdote, definitely. A random collection of coincidences, maybe. Or perhaps a disconnected series of events and just another example of how life rarely goes to plan. But to me this is the story of how a gluten intolerance, a pesky volcano and some horrible white wine led me to exactly where I needed to be - and to who I needed to be with. To me this is a story of Grace.
And when I think of how my life has played out - exactly NOT to plan - I realise this has happened a lot. This intervention of grace, which says ‘I know you think you know what you want, but I’m going to lead you to what you need’. Which says; ‘please bear with me because although it looks like everything has gone to shit, this will all conspire together for good soon’. Which says; ‘I know you love to be in control and know what’s coming next, but just let me take over for a bit and I’ll make it better for you’.
This is a story about sometimes getting out of our own way to allow ourselves to lean into the greater powers at work around us. And whether to you that’s God, or the Universe or the Laws of Synchronicity, I believe we can all subscribe to the power of Grace in our lives. It is an imperceptible, empathetic and often playful force towards good that often only makes sense in hindsight, where we look back at seemingly random and/or difficult events in our life and say ‘oh now I get it’.
I have a tattoo on my ankle that says ‘sunlight later’. It’s from one of the last lines of one of my favourite poems by Louis MacNeice which goes ‘There will be time to audit / The accounts later, there will be sunlight later / And the equation will come out at last.’ Meaning – it will all make sense in the end. Meaning – however dark and desperate times may seem to be, we can hang on to the fact that there will always be sunlight later.
Meaning – we are led by grace, if we let it lead us.
Disclaimer: I don’t profess to be any sort of expert on the range of (convoluted and complicated) human emotions that I periodically choose to write about! These are merely personal reflections based on personal experiences.
