We'd love to share your Moment with the entire World Grace Project community!  It's easy, just fill out our form on the right.  Wondering what a Moment of Grace is like?  Read Terrie's Red Light Moment below or check out the most recent submission.

If you listened to the audio on the Home Page, you might recall my story about the Moment of Grace I experienced with a struggling young mother and her child. (See below if you missed it.) There was another Moment of Grace that occurred just before her loud muffler distracted me.

I’d been sitting at the red light watching dozens of people crossing the busy intersection. It was lunchtime, downtown Minneapolis on a beautiful summer day. The top was down on that convertible XJS Jaguar I was driving. 

People were quite interested in the car - and then would look to see who was driving. Most men would smile or acknowledge me in some way. Most women frowned or simply looked away without acknowledging me…except for one woman who waved and smiled as if to say, “You go, girl!” 
 
I became acutely aware of the silent judgment occurring in front of me. My body began to churn as I realized I was being judged by what I was driving. My worth was measured by the car I drove, by a material object. 

That moment of awareness collided with my memory of having been homeless, living in a ‘68 Chevy Impala. I was judged by my situation then, too. Naturally, my measured value then was not nearly as great as my “Jaguar value”. The more I had and did, the more recognition and value I received. The measure had nothing to do with who I was – a human being with the same Heart and Soul, no matter what I was driving, where I lived or what I did for a living.
 
No one passing by the Jaguar that summer day would ever have guessed that I had lived in a car in the New Mexico desert with an 13-month old child. And not one person in that intersection could feel the ache in my heart as my profound awareness came to light: This is how we treat each other, day after day. 

It was a “Red Light Moment” that became a Moment of Grace as I asked myself: “How do I judge others unfairly?” “How often do I invent a fictional story about someone and then treat them as if it were fact?” The pedestrians’ judgments were a mirror reflection of my own. And just as this Awareness was rising, a loud muffler came up alongside my car…