"What is your favorite feeling?" I asked family gathered for dinner. 

   My son answered first. "Relief."

   We nodded. No one asked, "Relief from what?"

  Pain demands relief. Gratitude requires grief. The crucial final step can lead to Grace.

   Emily Dickinson captured this best, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes/ The Nerves sit ceremonious.."

   "Formal" means, above earth's house of pain. 

  How do we reach such hallowed space? Pain is unavoidable, relief. a blessing,  Grace requires work. She is the life companion we seek, the friend who remains when Agony returns.

   We all admire those who, although un-drugged, appear serene in pain's darkest hours. "How do they do it?" caregivers wonder.

   Grace's face is Joan of Arc in the flames, Jesus on the cross, cancer sufferers, laboring moms. St. Thérèse of Lisieux wrote, “Everything is grace.” 

   We are not saints. And I find nothing un-saintly in groans emerging from a tortured body. Agony, emotional or physical, seeks expression. 

   That is why I admire what I rarely practice: a grace that draws from the deepest well of courage. The refusal to be defeated by pain. The insistence on transcending it to precious, indefinable peace. 

   The three-stage path is clear and crooked: Grief to Gratitude to Grace. Although the prize is serenity it requires so much courage to achieve, must less sustain, that few reach it except in life's last moments. We envy those that find it earlier.  

   My very dear friend and leader, Tracy Wimberly, had a sign on her office door, a synonym for grace: Peace.  In my weekly talks with her she hands me that gift every time. Meet Liz Wessel and you will receive that gift as well, 

   May Grace visit you now and stay with you always. 

-Erie Chapman 

Photo by April Sand – "Bone Marrow Transplant Patient"