The Pinch

So my dear friend of 10 years asks me when she will have peace and I tell her probably never. (I'm not a prophet - that was said more for the shock value than for it's veracity.) Instead, I pinch her arm real hard and I tell her, learn to live around the pinch - continue loving yourself and your God and your neighbor around the Pinch.

When I was pregnant with my first baby, to prepare us for contractions that come with an unmedicated birth, they told our partners to pinch us and not to let go even when we asked them to stop. (It didn't really prepare me for an unmedicated birth, but I remembered the pinch!)

Do I go around pinching all my friends? (Only friends that I've had for 10 or more years - just kidding). No. But my only point is (and the years have taught me) that many, many of us have Pinches in our lives that don't go away. Sometimes they do go away and that is called grace. And sometimes they go away with hard work and that is called grace. And when they don't go away, that is also called grace.

So we take grace in whatever form it comes, make peace with our "pinches" and go on.