In junior high, a friend and I were sent to the principal’s office because we were setting tacks on the school bus. If you’re not familiar with “setting tacks,” it means placing a thumbtack pointy-side up so that an unsuspecting kid sits on it. To be fair, it was wintertime in rural Ohio, and all the kids had long, thick winter coats, so any poke they received would have been minimal at best. In fact, it was a little disappointing that no one seemed to notice. But getting called into the principal’s office was a first for me, and since corporal punishment was a staple in those days, most who were called into the principal’s office received a few whacks from the “board of education.”
My friend and I didn’t receive a paddling, but I knew once I got home, I had to confess and do it quickly. The saying at our house was, “if you get a spanking at school, you’ll get double when you get home.” Even though I hadn’t received a spanking, I had come close. Worse yet, one of the few junior high dances was coming up that weekend, and I wanted to go. I knew that even if I didn’t get a spanking, I was probably going to be grounded. That meant no dance for a middle schooler living out in the country with few options for fun.
“Am I grounded from the dance this weekend?” I asked my mom after I confessed.
“You’ll need to talk to your dad when he gets home,” she said in a somber tone.
As soon as I heard his car coming up our long gravel lane, I ran out to the barn where he parked his car. Standing in the barn, he listened as I told him what I’d done, tears of shame and regret running down my face. “Am I grounded from the dance this weekend?” I still had the nerve to ask.
“Do you understand why what you did was wrong?” he asked me as we walked from the barn to the house. I assured him I did, and then he said the strangest, most unpredictable thing: “You can still go to the dance.”
This is a story of grace, and if you know anything about grace, it is undeserved and often unexpected. If we consider how many ordinary kindnesses we receive, undeserved and unexpected, we might be more likely to extend grace to others whose trespasses against us are probably less than the equivalent of setting tacks. Because of grace, my thirteen-year-old self had the chance to dance.
photo courtesy of Kuhlens Photography