The Grace of No #GraceofYes

Last updated on: December 26, 2014 at 5:15 pm by Jennifer Fitz

The Grace of No #GraceofYes 2014-12-26T17:15:11-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

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I’ve joked all summer that I need Lisa Hendey to write me a companion volume to her new book, The Grace of Yes. It would consist of a single index card with the word NO in giant letters. She assured me: There’s a chapter for you.

So when my copy of the The Grace of the Yes arrived, I stared at it nervously for a minute, then quick checked the table of contents. Chapter 7: The Grace of No. Written for people like me. I flipped straight to it, like an alcoholic racing past the bar towards the coffee shop.

The thing about being a yes person is that you have to also be a no person. The trick is in knowing when to use which word. Lisa shares her own stories about the well-timed no’s that made the yes‘s possible. Generosity requires not just fortitude, but temperance, prudence, and justice.

Reading the No chapter helped me get a handle on my vocation. What do I need to be saying yes to? How do I know what I should devote my limited time and energy to?

What’s in my jar?

One of the best yes‘s I’ve said over the past several years has been the decision to join Lisa’s stable of writers on the Gospel Reflection team at CatholicMom.com. This month my assigned reading was on the parable of the talents, in which our Lord asks, “What have you done with the gifts I’ve given you?” For a yes person, this is a terrifying reading: Have I failed to use my talents properly? Have I been hiding my gifts in a hole in the ground?

The temptation is to get distracted by the gifts that aren’t in my jar: Lord, I wish I could do ________ for you, but I don’t have what it takes. Part of the Grace of Yes is learning to set aside thoughts about what I can’t do for the Lord so that I can see what I do have to give. So many times, the thing I don’t have is concealing the gift that I do, a gift that I’m wasting. The wonder of being made in the image of the God who creates everything out of nothing is that gifts like poverty, weakness, rejection, loneliness, failure, illness, and even death can all be used to do the Lord’s work, if only we remember to make use of them.

A Beautiful Book for Times Like These

If it’s easy to forget the power and sheer usefulness of unwanted gifts, it’s just as easy to be lulled into complacency when we’re given the fun stuff in our gift bag. The constant temptation is to use our gifts primarily for our own comfort, forgetting that it all belongs to the Lord.

Having prayed my way through Lisa’s No chapter, I’ve put myself onto a few weeks of whatever you call the opposite of a retreat: I guess mindful immersion might describe it. It’s a period of aggressively saying no to all the things that hinder the pursuit of my proper vocation, so that I can see where my yes belongs more clearly.

Whether you’re a natural *yes-*person or a natural no-person, The Grace of Yes is a beautiful, helpful reflection on learning to hear and answer your calling.

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