Everyday Heroes: Divine Grace

She's creepy. She's kooky. She's a smart ass. And she's spooky. The Divine Grace Family *snap* *snap*

Just playing, well except for the smart ass. That's just the God's and the Grace's own truth, and I love her for it.

Divine Grace aka Chad Pace is a bright and shiny human being wrapped inside of a drag queen cocoon, and I am hard pressed to think of a more gifted writer and more brilliant person walking around this planet.

Technically, I met Chap Pace just shy of 15 years ago when I was a freshman in college and living in Asheville, NC. More recently, I reconnected with him, originally, through the "Are You Interested" application on Facebook. I had no idea that I already knew this individual, I just thought he had pretty eyes, and over the last couple years of Facebooking, I have come to reknow and love this amazing human being.

Let me tell you why.

Divine Grace is a truth speaker. In her writings and her rantings, she uses comedy pushed to the edges and astute insight and an absurdly powerful gift of stripping the shit from the shingle and serving it up as a delightful cocktail for your funny bone in order to dissect the ugly of the world and reveal it for what it is. I am in awe of Divine Grace.

I am humbled by Chad Pace.

Chad Pace is a sweet man that moved home to the Blue Ridge mountains to be with his family and take care of his sick father. Far away from his chosen home, he has managed to remain spiritually strong at a time of intense pain. He has put on the back burner what, from what I can tell, has been a thriving career as a performer in New York, in order to be there for a man he loves dearly. And while I have a deep and treasured love for Asheville, North Carolina, being an out queer in Western North Cackalacky ain't nothing like being oneself, in all its drag glory, on the streets of New York (btw, it is no fluke that Divine Grace is one of the fiercest Queens in NYC...no place I have ever been...not even Atlanta...has produced the quality of performers as has that Gay Bermuda Triangle from Hickory to Asheville to Charlotte).

Chad Pace and Divine Grace are a testament to how to live rightly in the world. He doesn't hide his pain, but he shows us how to live with it and to embrace it. He speaks truth when it is difficult and looks damn good doing it. He is a brilliant thinker, a tremendous performer, and if the bitch doesn't get his ass on Project Runway with his home sewn recreations of shit like Idina Menzel's dress from Wicked, I am going to personally kick his ass back to Appalachia when he finally does return home.

Like many people in the world, I love you Gracie. Kiss your Daddy on the cheek from a colored stranger he has never met. Take good care of yourself, and come home when you can.