Learn to Move Forward in Grace

For week twenty-seven, Scribbled Lives had a prompt which included a quote we were all to do in any format or way we chose:

Calligraphy is the ultimate synthesis of what I love: language, art and human connection.

– Joy Deneen

And who is Joy Deneen you ask? She is a very talented Calligrapher from Canada. I started this piece by writing the word calligraphy at the top on mixed media paper. I then proceeded to write the next phrase and botched it. RATS! Now what? I sat and thought how to do this differently without having to recreate the portions that I liked, so I cut the word calligraphy out of the piece of paper and placed it on black paper. THAT Works! Which then gave me the process – write each word or portion of the quote on different pieces of paper using different shades of blue or green, cut them out, then arrange them on the black paper. Once I had them all arranged and glued to the back paper, it was still missing something. I left it overnight – for my brain to ponder and think – and woke the next day with an idea. Find synonyms for the main words in the quote and write them around each word to connect the phrase together. Hurrah! I liked it…and so did the group.

When your plan does not go according to plan, now what? You can chuck it and start again. You can file it away until you are inspired to finish it. OR, you can give yourself grace to go a different direction. I use the word ‘grace’ because it means forgiving the flub-up, calming down, and moving forward with renewed enthusiasm and hope. GRACE…it’s a fantastic word and releases us to move again without the weight or pain of our mistake, while still taking with us the lesson learned. More often than we care to admit, we need to give ourselves and others grace to move forward with a renewed perspective in forgiveness.

Good work does not always happen on the first try, or the second, or even the third. Sometimes it takes months or years to see an idea come to fruition in such a way that we can be proud of our work. Today let me encourage you to move forward in grace. Give it to yourself and those around you. Learn the lessons and then move on.