One of the presents my ultimate present-giver friend gave me this year was a pinky-sized knit doll from Mexico. It’s called a worry doll, you’re supposed to tell it all your worries and put it under your pillow for safe keeping. The other day I was looking at it, trying to be so gentle but feeling like my hands were too rough for it’s soft texture. She looks like someone who is untouchable, not because she hasn’t ever been touched but because she has. And now, she’s developed the ability to become untouchable by any hand, word, or action. I wondered what it might be like to live in a world where you are so strong but so powerful. Have seen and lived so much and yet look completely tamed. Would I want to live that way, though? To always be seen and known as being ‘put together’? That makes me feel stressed and out of control.

I have a friend who’s in her first relationship and she said to me today that she’s expecting imperfection. I had to sit and think on that for a bit. And she clarified, saying, not that it is a bad thing or a cynical outlook, but I know that no matter how well you live, how kind or decent you are in this life, humans are imperfect. To expect imperfections, yet hold extraordinary standards for your people, is the most real definition of grace I have found.