It is easy to offer grace where no history exists.
Harder where love has already left its marks.
To a stranger, grace is generosity.
To the beloved, grace is surrender.
The Stranger
I’ve noticed something about myself that unsettles me:
sometimes it is easier to offer grace to a stranger than to someone I love.
With a stranger, the story between us is blank.
No history. No wounds.
No quiet disappointments waiting in the shadows.
Grace, in those moments, feels like generosity—
it flows outward, unburdened, unmeasured.
The Beloved
But with the beloved, the story is long and layered.
Every act of grace brushes against memories of what has been said,
what has been forgotten,
what has been left undone.
Grace there doesn’t feel like generosity.
It feels like surrender.
And surrender is harder—because it asks me to set down
not only judgment,
but also the armor I’ve carried to protect myself.
I think that is why it is easier to bless the stranger on the street
than the child in the kitchen,
the partner in the living room,
the parent on the other end of the phone.
With them, grace has to pass through the tangle of my own longing.
The Cost in Co-Parenting
I feel this most in co-parenting.
It is one thing to show grace in the shared logistics of schedules,
pickups,
and drop-offs.
It is another to offer grace when emotions surface—
when the past whispers through the present,
when expectations rub raw against old wounds.
In those moments, grace isn’t an idea.
It is a choice:
to unclench my jaw,
to soften my voice,
to see not the history but the human standing in front of me.
Across Traditions
And yet across traditions, this paradox is not new.
- In Christian thought, Jesus asks us to forgive “seventy times seven,” not because it is simple, but because love without limits is the only way intimacy survives.
And when he spoke of “hating” family, perhaps he was naming this very terrain: that our closest ties can also bind us most tightly. To follow him is to loosen even those bonds—not to abandon love, but to free it from possession. - In Buddhism, the practice of metta (loving-kindness) begins with oneself and extends outward. Strangers may be easier at first, but true practice circles back to those closest, where attachments cut deepest.
- In Islam, one of God’s names is Ar-Rahman—the Most Merciful—reminding us that mercy is not selective, but constant, even when our human hearts waver.
- In Hindu epics, forgiveness is often portrayed as strength, not weakness—
a force that restores dharma in the very relationships where betrayal or injury occurred.
The Wholeness of Grace
The pattern is clear:
grace given at a distance is noble,
but grace given in closeness is transformative.
To a stranger, grace is generosity.
To the beloved, grace is surrender.
Maybe that’s the point.
Grace isn’t meant to be easy.
It is meant to be whole.
And wholeness always costs something—
especially where love already lives.
Especially where co-parenting, or partnership, or family
calls us to practice grace again and again
in the very places we are most tender.
An Open Question
So I wonder—
where is grace hardest for you to give:
to the stranger you’ll never see again,
or to the one whose absence you’d feel most?
Related reflection:
👉 Read “Unless: Presence Over Hustle”