"Marilyn, you really need to get yourself organized."

It had been a phrase spoken to her since that day in grade one when she lost her running shoes in Jenny Stewart's basement. Similar statements were written on her report cards through all her years at school. Her assignments were usually late and were always left until the last minute. As a teenager, she was late for work at the grocery store at least once a week. Because her boss Mr. Shannon was a tolerant man, however, Marilyn's only consequences were hearing that phrase each week from one other person.

Mr. Shannon's tolerance was tested to its limit one day when she forgot to lock the store at closing time. The next morning, Mr. Shannon found the entire contents of the bulk section all over the store and most of the candy stock missing. Marilyn's job loss would not have been significant, except that it happened the summer before she had to go to University. Thankfully, there was one other person in her life who was willing to have his tolerance tested. "Now, what I'm going to get you to do is go out into the field and open the second gate to your left. The cows will know to follow the fenced road back to the barn. You can't miss the gate, it's beside the pile of aluminum pipes."

Uncle Jim was tall and lanky with a straggly black-and-gray beard. As he spoke to her, he lifted his gloved hand to his forehead, leaving a bit of manure on his face. Though not looking forward to two months of shovelling manure, Marilyn was relieved that there was not much she could to do mess up on a farm.

As Marilyn walked toward the fence, she went over that evening's to-do list. It was not her recent job loss that prompted her to keep lists, for Marilyn's parents had taught her to make them from the time she could write. She wrote them faithfully, but rarely accomplished everything on them. Being fired was just another incentive to work harder at actually completing them.

When she reached the field, Marilyn opened the gate and watched the cows walk through in perfect single file. "How do they know to do that?" she murmured to herself. She then bent down to tie her shoes and started to recite her list out loud: "Run for 40 minutes, shower, start reading next semester's History text book, study Latin vocabulary flashcards..."

Marilyn stood up again to close the gate. Looking at the cows again, she noticed that they were no longer in single file, but scattered all over another field.

"That's weird," she mused. "Hey, where did the barn go?"

It was not until she turned around and saw both the barn and the pile of aluminum pipes far behind her that Marilyn realized that the cows were feasting on the grass in Uncle Jim's neighbor's property. At that came the familiar feeling of her stomach falling to the bottom of her feet. Marilyn had opened the wrong gate.

As soon as the vision of Uncle Jim's reaction came to her mind, Marilyn panicked and scrambled to open the gate again. She immediately slipped on a pile of manure and hit her head on the fence stake. She got up again and ran into the neighbor's field. Grabbing the nearest cow she began pulling it back toward the gate. The cow resisted, causing her to slip and fall again, this time landing on her back. Marilyn got up again and pulled the cow by its collar and began cursing it.

"Come on! Why can't you just cooperate! What are you, stupid? Come on!"

The cow escaped her grasp and ran away. The cow's sudden quick movement seemed to indicate oncoming danger to the other cows, for they began stampeding further into the neighbor's property toward the bordering forest.

Realizing that chasing them was futile, Marilyn collapsed into the freshly fertilized pasture and began to weep bitterly.

"How do I always find a way to mess up? How am I going to tell them that I was fired by my own uncle?" She looked up into the sky. "You think this is funny. Don't you? Do you find pleasure in seeing me fail over and over again? Why don't you just leave me alone?!"

Knowing there was nothing to do but tell Uncle Jim what had happened, Marilyn walked toward the barn, tears and blood stinging her eyes. She walked with her head down the entire way, staring at her manure-stained shirt and pants.

When she reached the barn, she saw Uncle Jim laying silage for the cows and walked towards him. Not wanting to look him in the eye, she just started talking with her head down.

"Uncle Jim, I'm sorry. I opened the wrong gate and the cows got out into the neighbor's property."

Hesitating, she looked up to face her consequences in the eye. During the walk between the field and the barn, Marilyn had envisioned many different reactions on Uncle Jim's face. Although she had already seen each reaction from a different person, all of them communicated disappointment and that familiar phrase: "Marilyn, you really need to get yourself organized."

When Marilyn's eyes met her uncle's gaze, however, she saw an expression that she had never seen before. Uncle Jim's clear green eyes were soft rather than stern, showing compassion rather than tolerance. He handed her a cloth to wipe her face.

"It's okay. I did the same thing last week," he said quietly.

Tears began to stream down Marilyn's face again.

"Come on, we'll use the four wheelers to chase them back into the gate."

It wasn't that she got to keep her job, or that she wouldn't have to face everyone back home with another failure, or even that there was a quick solution to the problem. It was just that, for the first time, she had been shown grace.

Emily Vázquez is a recent linguistics graduate of Trinity Western University. Since returning to her hometown of Timmins, Ontario, she has been teaching French and computers at a Christian school as well as tutoring at a Homework Club. During her free time, Emily skis, runs, sings in two choirs, writes, and spends time with her new husband Iván, a musician from Mexico.