Give Grace.

I was at a family baby shower today and being there reminded me of my personal theme of this year – Grace. As a new mom myself I selected the theme with purpose – to set an intention to remind myself to give grace and not expect perfection. I love setting goals and holding myself accountable to those goals, but when I fail, it’s important that I carve out space to give grace.

But fill in the blank, because we all have new challenges and we all are working to find balance. What’s important though, is that we recognize one another’s progress and we don’t expect perfection – it’s important that we give grace.

In the office, this rings true for us on a constant basis. Someone can be an incredible hire and, after X time, they take a side step. As a team we talk about it because side steps don’t take away from the greatness that already happened; side steps aren’t indicative of poor habits, they represent a bad day or a bad choice. Progress, not perfection. Grace happens in between the big events of our days and can be hard to capture and difficult to articulate. At the end of the day it’s about sitting across from one another and listening, caring, and giving grace. If we don’t listen, we’ll never know. Below are just a sampling…

• “You are helping me so much I can’t even Express it. I feel physically lighter because of you”
• We all make mistakes, right? We incorrectly entered Garret’s hours and he left us a voicemail on a Tuesday night – he was so kind about it.  As a result of teamwork, we took quick action and remedied the situation resulting in him getting paid on time; we aren’t perfect, but Garrett gave us the grace we needed to make it right.
• Some days we want to hug our employees we are so excited! Kassie is about to be released from her 3 year probation sentence but found that she still needed to complete a court ordered 30 day treatment program prior, even though she has a length of sobriety already.  She entered treatment and after 2 days they quickly realized she did not need to be there. She was released to attend an outpatient program and is going back to work on Monday!
• From one of our recruiters on why she loves what she does: I get to see why they are here, what brought them to needing a job at this particular time in their life.  In the short time I have been interviewing candidates I have met someone who just moved here from Liberia, someone from Texas, a diabetic on disability, a welder who is at a crossroads because his profession has caused him back problems, a woman who hasn’t interviewed since the 90s, but recently got laid off, an expecting mother, a college student, an individual who hasn’t had a license in years because he didn’t pay child support.  I could go on and I have only been doing this part-time for a month. I guess my moral of this “story” is you have no idea what brings people into your life, or the life they are currently living.

Merry Christmas to you and yours,

-Heather