Grace!
The scene is the 10th of June in the Year of Our Lord 2002: I'm riding my bike home from school when one of those sudden downpours--the ones where you feel like you're being pounded by rivers of water pouring out of the skies and it's impossible to even hope to remain dry--surprises me and in moments I'm completely soaked. Somehow it's those moments where I should start screaming in frustration that something moves inside me and I smile, laugh out loud and break into song. Typically, it's "Freude! Freude! Freude, schöner Gotterfunken..." but on this day, perhaps not surprisingly, it was a new song of mine entitled "Rain."
And the rain came pouring downThese words being more-or-less an image of grace in that lyric. I careened down the sidewalk next to the highway, no doubt an object of pity or horror, but squished my way down the halls of my apartment building, cleaned up and passed out.
pouring down on you...
But unbeknownst to me at the time, just as I was singing these words about the coming of grace, my sister was finishing eight hours labor and had just successfully brought Grace Jean into the world.
It would be a few weeks before I was able to see her myself, but I was already on my way to complete adoring my first niece and goddaughter.