{"id":738,"date":"2007-12-19T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2007-12-19T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html"},"modified":"2007-12-19T09:00:32","modified_gmt":"2007-12-19T09:00:32","slug":"saving-grace-how-we-heal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html","title":{"rendered":"Saving Grace: How We Heal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"revised%20grace.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/71\/import\/revised%20grace.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"240\" \/><br \/>\n<em>This is my last blog post in my series about the series <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnt.tv\/series\/savinggrace\/\">\u201cSaving Grace.\u201d<\/a> <\/em><br \/>\nI wish I had a transcript of last night\u2019s show because almost all of the lines were profound. I was deeply moved, like I am after a beautiful liturgy.<br \/>\nIn the first scene, Grace\u2019s best friend, Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo), is listing everything that the angel Earl has left behind for Grace as clues. That same night, when Grace wakes from a recurring nightmare of a dog with a long, dragging tongue, Earl appears with a sweatshirt he bought for Grace in Malibu, with a big \u201cM\u201d on it.<br \/>\n\u201cWhat do you want, Earl?\u201d Grace asks him.<br \/>\n\u201cI want you to heal,\u201d he responds.<br \/>\n\u201cSo now you\u2019re my therapist?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cSometimes you have to go back before you can move forward.\u201d<br \/>\nWhen Grace gets to work the next day, Rhetta has written out all the \u201cEarl Evidence,\u201d on a large white board, everything he has left behind for Grace: the blood of the man on death row Grace thought she killed the first night Earl came to bail her out, saliva, a sweatshirt with an \u201cM,\u201d a tulip, a little plastic duck, sand from the Grand Canyon where Earl took her.<br \/>\n\u201cEarl says you need to heal,\u201d Rhetta says to Grace. \u201cLook at this stuff \u2026 does any of it make sense \u2026 lead you back?\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cYeah, it makes sense,\u201d Grace replies. \u201cThis means Earl is a clutter bug!\u201d As always, she deflects the significance of the conversation with a sarcastic comment. (Yikes, that doesn\u2019t sound familiar.)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n\u201cListen,\u201d Rhetta says, confronting her best friend, \u201cyou just checked out.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cGrace, your family has sh*t,\u201d she continues. \u201cEvery family has sh*t. But you just checked out. \u2026<br \/>\n\u201cEarl wants you to heal,\u201d Rhetta repeats. \u201cHe says that God has big plans for you.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cEarl or God wants me to atone \u2026 to redeem myself \u2026,\u201d Grace lashes back. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll just keep his trash to myself.\u201d<br \/>\nAfter Rhetta leaves, Grace stays there, with all the Earl evidence written out, all the clues to her hurtful past \u2026 the memories keeping her in a state of lonely rage, preventing everyone (all family members, friends, and lovers) from getting too close, from loving her in a real way. She sits there looking at the name \u201cFather Patrick Murphy,\u201d the priest who sexually molested her as a child. And Earl, looking over her shoulder (although Grace doesn\u2019t know he is there) starts to weep.<br \/>\nAfter Rhetta does more investigation on Father Patrick Murphy, or \u201cFather Patrick Satan Murphy,\u201d as Grace refers to him, she finds out that he didn\u2019t die of lung cancer as was the rumor, that he is presently living in a comfortable retirement home in Tulsa. Rhetta drives Grace out into the middle of the desert, parks her minivan, makes Grace stand about 10 feet from her, and then tells her that Father Murphy is still alive.<br \/>\n\u201cGrace, kick, scream, yell, do whatever you want, but we are not leaving here until you process this.\u201d<br \/>\nGrace goes into the minivan to try to find the keys to drive herself home, But Rhetta has hidden them, so Grace goes into a tantrum kicking around all of the trash in Rhetta\u2019s back seat. And finally, she begins to cry.<br \/>\nThe two sit there, in the middle of the desert, while Grace tells someone for the first time what really happened when she was nine years old, and ten, and eleven (at which point she was raped).<br \/>\n\u201cHe stopped when I got my period,\u201d she explains to Rhetta, \u201cand went on to Paige (Grace\u2019s sister). One day in church, I went up to him and told him that I missed him. I made him kiss me, and as soon as his tongue was in my mouth, I bit down on it so hard that it bled. I told him if he ever tried anything on my sister again that I would tell all the nuns what he had done to me. \u2026 A week later he was transferred due to \u201ccancer of the tongue,\u201d of which we were told killed him not long after. Or so everyone thought.\u201d<br \/>\nIt was healing for me to watch Grace erupt with rage, doubt, confusion, sorrow\u2014like a damn breaking\u2014and a flood of emotion that previously had no where to go emerged as a river with a chance at reconciliation.<br \/>\nAs part of Rhetta\u2019s investigation, she asked Grace\u2019s brother, Johnny, a Catholic priest, where Fr. Murphy was. Johnny begins to put things together and drives to Tulsa to punch Fr. Murphy in the face.<br \/>\nAfter Rhetta confesses to Grace that her brother may know, Grace drives to the retirement herself and sits in the car while Johnny confronts Fr. Murphy. As she watches this, Earl appears to Grace.<br \/>\n\u201cI knew this day was coming,\u201d he said to Grace, \u201cI just didn\u2019t know when.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cSure you did,\u201d Grace replies. \u201cYou knew this was going to happen all along. You left me bread crumbs leading me here.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cI can\u2019t interfere, Grace,\u201d Earl explains. \u201cI can\u2019t stop tornadoes from happening or pedophiles from molesting little girls. I\u2019m just fed-ex delivering the message.\u201d<br \/>\nThe most powerful scene of the episode, and of the whole series, in my opinion, is when Grace confronts God.<br \/>\n\u201cYou want me to turn to you, God, to believe in you \u2026 as Fr. Murphy gets to walk by young children and tend to his rose garden \u2026 Why would I turn to you?? I HATE you! Babies die, and Fr. Murphy lives among roses!\u201d<br \/>\nGrace decides to kill the priest herself. She sneaks into his retirement home, white gloves on, and shoves a gun into his mouth.<br \/>\n\u201cHow many kids have you raped?\u201d she says.<br \/>\n\u201cNo. please. Every day I pray for you. For what I did. You don\u2019t want this damnation on your soul,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m just Fed-Ex, trying to deliver a message\u201d (Earl\u2019s line).<br \/>\n\u201cDo you know an angel named Earl?\u201d she asks him.<br \/>\nHeavy stuff. . . . Rape. Death. Injustice.<br \/>\nBut also the power of redemption, the beauty of friendship, and the seeds of healing.<br \/>\nSometimes we need to go back in order to move forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is my last blog post in my series about the series \u201cSaving Grace.\u201d I wish I had a transcript of last night\u2019s show because almost all of the lines were profound. I was deeply moved, like I am after a beautiful liturgy. In the first scene, Grace\u2019s best friend, Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo), is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration-and-prayer"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Saving Grace: How We Heal - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saving Grace: How We Heal - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is my last blog post in my series about the series \u201cSaving Grace.\u201d I wish I had a transcript of last night\u2019s show because almost all of the lines were profound. I was deeply moved, like I am after a beautiful liturgy. 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I was deeply moved, like I am after a beautiful liturgy. In the first scene, Grace\u2019s best friend, Rhetta (Laura San Giacomo), is&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2007-12-19T09:00:32+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/revised%20grace.jpg"}],"author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html","name":"Saving Grace: How We Heal - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/revised%20grace.jpg","datePublished":"2007-12-19T09:00:32+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-19T09:00:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/revised%20grace.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/revised%20grace.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2007\/12\/saving-grace-how-we-heal.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Saving Grace: How We Heal"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. 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