Free Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott Page B

my parents’ lives, of the good life, were going to be part of an evolutionary journey—the marvelous food and storytelling, bookstores, hiking—along with what I found in the religious houses of my childhood friends and in churches, along with sharing the deepest truth with women in profound and very funny conversation, along with silence and meditation. God: this was so radical, and so delicious.
    I am not saying that it became easy. Like learning the piano or Spanish or meditation, I had to practice and do poorly—I had to read difficult material, and then stay with it, and talk to others, and slowly start to understand. Then I had to try something else hard and worthy. I had to seek wisdom, teachers. And oh, relationships. Don’t even get me started, unless I have all day to describe the total, almost hilariousinappropriateness of every fixer-upper, I mean man, I tried to get to love me. But as Rumi said, “Through love all pain will turn to medicine,” not most pain, or for other people; and the pain and failures grew me, helped slowly restore me to the person I was born to be. I had to learn that life was not going to be filling if I tried to scrunch myself into somebody else’s idea of me, i.e., someone sophisticated enough to prefer dark chocolate. I like milk chocolate, like M&M’s: so sue me. But I no longer have to stuff myself to the gills.
    I mean, not very often.
    I learned from all my teachers that when I feel like shoveling in food, a man, or expensive purchases, the emptiness can be filled only with love—a nap with the dogs, singing off-key with my church. Or maybe, perhaps, a fig.
    I learned that opening myself to my own love and to life’s tough loveliness not only was the most delicious, amazing thing on earth but also was quantum. It would radiate out to a cold, hungry world. Beautiful moments heal, as do real cocoa, Pete Seeger, a walk on old fire roads. All I ever wanted since I arrived here on earth were the same things I needed as a baby, to go from cold to warm,lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full. You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing that you are worth profound care, even when you’re dirty and rattled. Who knew?

Dad

    N o one can prove that God does or doesn’t exist, but tough acts of forgiveness are pretty convincing for me. It is so not my strong suit, and I naturally prefer the company of people who hold grudges, as long as they are not held against me. Forgiveness is the hardest work we do. When, against all odds, over time, your heart softens toward truly heinous behavior on the part of parents, children, siblings, and everyone’s exes, you almost have to believe that something not of this earth snuck into your stone-cold heart.
    Left to my own devices, I’m a forgiveness denier—I’ll start to think that there are hurts so deep that nothing can heal them. Time alone won’tnecessarily do the trick. Our best thinking isn’t enough, or we would all be fine, instead of in our current condition. A lack of forgiveness is like leprosy of the insides, and left untreated, it can take out tissue, equilibrium, soul, sense of self. I have sometimes considered writing a book called
All the People I Still Hate: A Christian Perspective
, but readers would recoil. Also, getting older means that without meaning to, you accidentally forgive almost everyone—almost—so the book would not be long.
    You forgive your mother, for having had such terrible self-esteem, dependent on being of value to all men, everywhere, in every way. You forgive her for not having risen up, for not teaching you how to be an autonomous, beautiful woman, for not teaching you how to use eyeliner and blotting papers, and for not having been able to lose the extra fifty pounds that led to childhood embarrassment and your own lifetime obsessions. You forgive your father, for—well, you know—everything. The masculine shut-downedness, for which only