I heard that question today, and my first thought was to cringe. Because, oh no. Surely I didn’t remember to pause at all yesterday and thank God. I’ve been so focused lately on my goals, the things I haven’t reached or found or achieved. But then I remembered words from my journal written just yesterday, gratitude for “My boys. My man. And the joy of writing.” Whew! Passed that test, eh?

It’s a theme right now. People are doing it on facebook in light of Thanksgiving. My sister began a tradition of gratitude in her home. And I’m reading this book by Ann Voskamp: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, and in it she talks a lot about gratitude, including her attempt (which I’m assuming she accomplished) to make a list of one thousand daily, ordinary gifts. I love the idea, the discipline to want what you have.

I actually made my own thankful list in a bright pink notebook once where I recorded all kinds of things – favorite movie quotes and inside jokes, poems, ideas for stories. I wrote an “I love” list and an “I hate” one too. The hate list is no fun – waiting, not knowing, and braces all made the cut. The “I love” list isn’t that great either. Not like Ann’s with her blue jays and morning shadows and jam. Mine was a little more teenaged and untried – shaved legs, new clothes, the Star Spangled Banner before a ballgame, and no more braces. One sticks out to me, though: “Getting my hair short.” Surely not. My short hair hasn’t really been on my grateful list lately. I move it there sometimes, when it’s so easy to wash-and-go in the morning, when the darker color brings out the darker pigment in my hazel eyes (hazel is another word for meh in my opinion), when I remember that hopefully, prayerfully, I lost my hair in order to keep my life. Still, it’s strange to look back and remember there were times I wanted shorter hair.

I think I’ll be haunted for a while by that idea that I could wake up one day with only the things I thanked God for the day before. And it could make those moments after bed but before sleep really, really long.

What’s the smallest, most ordinary thing that makes it to your thank-you list?

I wonder what the world would look like divided into those who have imagined being a guest on Oprah and those who haven’t.

I have definitely imagined this. Sometimes I imagined it like non-singers imagine winning a Grammy, i.e., you’re basically a different person in the fantasy. Sometimes I imagined it like I’ve imagined writing beneath a shelf of books that all have my name on the spine. I.e.,  it could happen.

When she announced this would be her last season, I saw jokes online about the death of numerous author fantasies. After all, the Oprah seal of approval – whether her book club, her favorite things, or simply a nod that you exist – was proven to make a huge difference in the success of a thing. And I loved these jokes, because I related to them. Since I believe that everyone has a story worth listening to, it didn’t stretch my imagination very far to wonder if someday I’d get to tell mine on Oprah. Many, many, many people deserved a spot on that couch that never got it. One thing I loved about Oprah is that she knew this, she tried to tell us this. You matter, she told us. You have a voice. You have a story. And you matter.

Now that her show has officially closed, I don’t care at all that I was never on it. I just feel grateful I was never on it for something horrible. For every one show with pretty celebrities who told us how happy they were and that they were in “such a good place” in their lives, Oprah probably had ten shows with sadness. Sometimes the sadness had been overcome, but it was there just the same. Sometimes the sadness had ruined a person. Often it was too recent to tell.

When we wish for things, I wonder if we think it all the way through. Maybe that’s why not all wishes come true. It’s probably tender mercy that prevents them. Because to be on Oprah because you are Julia Roberts or the woman who survived poverty and abuse to become a learned professor or the person who wrote a book that’s changing lives – that would be something. But to have been on Oprah because you drank too much as a stay-at-home-mom or because you lied or abused or showed hate – that could be hard to rise above.

We’re lucky, those of us who get to face our humanity in private. It’s not on anybody’s DVR. It won’t make it to the 25th anniversary video. It’s a fuzzy memory, softened by time. And so, the fantasy of future greatness lives on.

Tell the truth. Did you ever imagine it? And if so, what did you say?! Consider this the yellow couch, my friend. This stage is yours.

Image Source

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

-Gandhi

Despite all my great perspective on life, despite having walked the valley of the shadow more than once, emerging with flawless self-awareness and zest for life (imagine the sheepish wink), I have been known to say, “I love my life, but I do not like my days.”

There are any number of fairly rational reasons for this sometimes. I mean, people, I know working from home is God’s gift to motherhood, but I’m tellin’ ya: It’s freakin’ hard sometimes. In my heart, motherhood is God’s give to motherhood, and I don’t like muddling it with medical transcription (in the old days) or web writing (in the nowadays). There are always seasons in which it seems both more difficult and more wonderful at the same time, and summer break is one of them. (i.e., Yay! The kids are home with me! Wahoo! We don’t have to pay a babysitter because I work from home! And…Ee gads it’s difficult to work with three little people hanging around me vacationing.) So the rational reasons come out of things like that.

But mostly, I’m just a world-class grumbler. I firmly believe, way deep down in the unshakeable part, that if you don’t like something you should change it or else focus on the reason you’re sticking with it in the first place. BUT I FIND THIS SO HARD TO DO. So I forget day in and day out.

But lately. (If I had a piano player behind me, he’d be crankin, the gospel riffs now). But lately, when I go to the first place – the grumbling – I find it so much easier to go to the better place and remember that how I feel about my day is totally and completely up to me. I realize I am the serenity in my own life. It’s so strange that serenity is the thing I crave most and the thing that has more often alluded me in life when it’s MY NAME. But I think of that as the coolest gift now, because I get to learn to be it.

For me, it’s serenity. What is it for you? Is it love? That’s a big one I think. Do you ever feel there’s not enough love in life? Maybe your spouse doesn’t appreciate you like he should or your friends don’t call enough. I think the answer is the same for you. Be the love you want in your life. Be for someone else what you wish they’d be for you. I could be wrong, but I think, I think, it will come right back to you when you do it.

And maybe it’s happiness. We all want that, I think. I don’t think we admit it very often. The Christian circle I’m from doesn’t admit it very often. And I mean that in the highest form of respect because I think there is a basic Christian truth that perhaps our own happiness is not the most important thing in life or the thing we’re supposed to strive toward. But I look for it anyway. I think we all do. And I try to look for it in a way that seems God-like, that seems like something he might endorse. You know what I mean – the feeling that you’re doing what you’re supposed to do, serving where you’re supposed to serve, loving the people you’re supposed to love. That all brings happiness, and it’s a happiness I think even the really good Christians try to find. And anyway, if it’s happiness for you – if that’s the thing that often seems to be beyond your grasp, find a way to be it instead. I think there must be a way.

I breathe like yoga, I listen to my latest favorite song, I clean a shelf, I write. These are some of the ways I become my own serenity. What do you want most? And what can you do to become it?

I like to-do lists and wish lists actually. I never have a wish list unless I’m pretty satisfied with life. And to-do lists are good because they give me something to look forward to. It would be awful to think you were done in life, wouldn’t it?

Still, I don’t like those moments – usually between 5 and 6 p.m., LIKE CLOCKWORK, when I’ve just finished work and I’m busy with supper and every single thing that’s out of place or left undone screams at me that my long-term to-do list looks exactly like it did months and months ago and it’s bound to look the same FOREVER. Poor Michael. He doesn’t even ask what’s wrong anymore when it’s that time of day, and I open the dishwasher a little harder than necessary and put spoons on the counter with emphasis.

So, in light of that, I am loving the delightful satisfaction of checking things off the list, here and there, the thrill of actually finishing something, of starting one week with a few more things completed than in the week before. Here are some of the things I’ve done lately to get that feeling.

Snapfish – I used to upload all my digital pictures to Snapfish.com with the goal that I would print them out eventually. (I still like albums you can flip through; I’m old-fashioned like that). But, you can probably see where I’m going with this. I stopped ordering actual prints about October of 2003. So I have some catching up to do, and it thrills me to no end to order a bunch and get that brightly-colored envelope in the mail, and then – more importantly – to tuck my memories into pretty albums and put them on our shelves. I love that feeling. And along these lines, I have ordered prints of the photographs from Jake’s birth and his first few weeks at home, so I’m at least one step toward that resolution at least.

Betsy-Tacy – Mom got me the first Betsy-Tacy book for Christmas, because of our blog-friend Katie who loves them. But I didn’t get to it until last week. You may know I once gave Anne of Green Gables to my niece and namesake, Nola Serenity, and wrote in it that when she read it someday, she’d be reading pieces of me. And that’s how it felt to read a beautiful children’s book that I knew Katie loved. And I didn’t realize until the very last chapter when Betsy and Tacy meet Tib that this is the very book Kathleen Kelly talks about in You’ve Got Mail when she says of Tib, “Whose real name, I’m sorry to say, is Thelma.” You know, Anne of Green Gables is mentioned fondly in that movie too, and suddenly it was like sitting down with Katie, Maud Hart-Lovelace, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Kathleen Kelly as we all just gushed about the literature we love.

Audrey Hepburn – I’ve now seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sabrina, and Roman Holiday thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law Mary who gave them to me for my birthday. My old-movie repertoire was sadly lacking and now feels much more complete. Roman Holiday, incidentally, was my first Gregory Peck flick. I now have a huge crush on Gregory Peck and feel I should buy a poster of him for my wall. Felicity said Michael might not like that, but all he said was, “He’s dead, right?” And speaking of my crush on Gregory Peck…

To Kill a Mockingbird – I finally bought this book that I have never read. I haven’t seen the movie either (with my aforementioned crush). And my life, as a person rather fond of words, feels a bit less fraudulent now. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but since reading it is such a delight, I don’t plan to hurry.

And that’s just the beginning. But it gives you an idea. I also clean the kitchen, sort through the boys’ not-so-endless-when-I-actually-take-the-time-for-it mound of paperwork, do a load of laundry, write in my journal, blog, or download a new song from iTunes. It’s the little things that squelch the five p.m. blues. What are your small, satisfying accomplishments that serve to keep you sane?

*Photo by tellmewhat2 on Flickr.

That’s what Peter Paker’s landlord says on Spiderman 3 when Peter goes all Bad-Boy on him when he gets symbioted (that’s not really a word) by the black alien goo that brings out all the evilest tendencies within him, which in Peter Parker’s case includes, but is not limited to, TERRIBLE hair, overconfidence, really bad dancing, and the belief that Mary Jane is not in fact a miracle from heaven but that other girls would actually be attracted to him as well.

I adore this movie line. ADORE. And I heard it the other day just when people on facebook had enraged me with their callous remarks about their neighbors and/or celebrities (who had, in fact, behaved horribly). And I realized, oh my goodness, it’s like I want everyone to be Thumper.

Last night I was magnificently disappointed with the results on Dancing with the Stars, and I whipped out my laptop to tweet about the absurdity of a nation that would vote out that cutie patootie soap star with dancing potential, a pleasant attitude, and an accent that at least made me think he could behave like a gentleman instead of another contestant on the show of whom I am afraid I’m not a fan. I wanted to use words like spoiled, unkind, questionably irresponsible, selfish, and non-dancer. Now, technically you don’t know who I’m talking about in that description (it’s not the other person who was in the bottom two) so I haven’t broken my own personal Thumper vow. And I didn’t break it last night either. Because just before I tweeted, I thought, What if it was Taylor Swift? And someone tweeted that she was a word that starts with W and rhymes with bore simply because her dress was a little short? How upset would I be?

Well, I’d be a little upset. Because I heart Taylor Swift in a basically appreciative fan sort of way, and I think that’s a horrible word to call any person, most of all a person you could probably still refer to more as “girl” than “woman”. And the person I wanted to describe – she’s a person too. And evidently she has fans. And certainly I walk on the same planet as her, which rules IN the possibility that I could either meet her one day or that she could stumble onto something I have written about her online.

That’s the Thumper, Baby. It’s resisting the urge to be funny – even HILARIOUS – if it’s at the expense of another human being. And by expense I mean whopping cha-ching. After all, I’m not sure America would still have a sense of humor if it lost sarcasm and jokes-at-the-expense-of-others. But, come on, name-calling? Generalizing a fellow human’s entire character on one poor choice? I can’t condone it, People. Say those things to your spouse (but not in front of your children – all those guilty step forward with me). Write them in a journal (if you don’t have my constant paranoia that you’ll die before you can repent for words written in anger). But don’t, and I mean seriously please don’t (the queen of benefit-of-the-doubt, i.e., my sister Felicity, WILL FIND YOU) write them for all your facebook friends to see or all your twitter followers. It’s just not good taste, and it could SO come back to haunt you.

And, also, eat your greens.

Are you with me? Or am I, like, way over the top, turning up the heat on this pressure cooker, sucking the all-in-good-fun JOY out of social networking? (Similarly, are you now racing through all my previous tweets and facebook statuses in order to catch me acting out against my own lofty – but no less true and noble – ideals? Because if you do, be warned: I also know all the appropriate rules of a good apology.)

Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, by SheepGuardingLlama on Flickr

Apparently it’s National Poetry Day. I like the idea of poetry. And I do enjoy reading it, but I’ve really done that so few times in my life. I couldn’t immediately point you to my favorite classic poems. And I’ve only written a few in my life. They all rhymed, which hardly seems Dickensonian enough to share today.

I’d like to be more familiar with the genre and always admired it in my author heroine, L.M. Montgomery. Poetry found its way into almost all her books – probably literally all of them.

This is one of my favorite passages from Rilla of Ingleside, which takes place during World War I.

The poem was a short, poignant little thing. In a month it had carried Walter’s name to every corner of the globe. Everywhere it was copied – in metropolitan dailies and little village weeklies, in profound reviews and “agony columns,” in Red Cross appeals and Government recruiting propaganda. Mothers and sisters wept over it, young lads thrilled to it, the whole great heart of humanity caught it up as an epitome of all the pain and hope and pity and purpose of the mighty conflict, crystallized in three brief immortal verses. A Canadian lad in the Flanders trenches had written the one great poem of the war. “The Piper” by Private Walter Blythe was a classic from its first printing.

Can you imagine writing something that “caught up” the whole of humanity that way? Can you imagine even reading it? Fortunately, and I think this might be the purpose for a day like today, at least one poem or line of poetry written by somebody somewhere has that power over each of us. Is there one like that for you?

Why do I do this? I mean, granted, my bed never ever feels so good as it does first thing in the morning when I should be getting out of it. It’s not a pillow-top. I don’t have a down comforter. And our sheets are so not Egyptian cotton. Or less than ten years old. But at 6:45 a.m. that bed feels like heaven itself. And in those moments, I can’t see any reason to get out of bed at all. Ever again. “I don’t really like my life that much anyway,” I think. In fact, I hate daylight. Who let that in? And showers were invented by the devil. I don’t want one. And it won’t make me feel better. I hate all my clothes, so I won’t find anything to wear. Why do we have jobs and school SO MUCH of our lives? Life is too short to get out of this bed right now when I don’t want to at all.

Honestly, I have no idea how I push past those minutes every morning. But I do. And about two minutes after the shower, I’m pretty cool with life.

They’re the saddest, most first-world, most ridiculous minutes of my day, those seconds post alarm but pre-shower. What about you? How long does it take you to accept the day?

I remember many times in my pre-teen and teen years when I would question some part of life or faith, and I would ask someone about it. And they would say, “You know the answer to that.” Because they had been teaching it to me for years based on their understanding of the bible, and they couldn’t understand why I would even question it. I didn’t like that answer very much.

We all live our lives by a certain belief system whether we would call ourselves believers or not. You can basically tell by your decisions what you believe about money, about family, about priorities. And really, you can probably figure out at least a few things you believe about spirituality.

In my book I have this line, “I believe in the soul. I believe we are eternal beings and that we go on forever and can even meet again one day on the other side.” I like that line, because I don’t take for granted that everyone reading will agree with me. And I don’t really make other proclamations in the book about things I believe for sure.

There aren’t a lot of things about God, heaven, Jesus, or Christianity that I am convinced I know. There are several things I’m pretty certain about. And there are many, many convictions by which I live my life whether or not I have sat down and decided for sure that I believe them.

So it kind of fascinates me these days to think about what things I do absolutely believe. And what others do. 

Have you heard of the movement online these days to share your secrets?(Anonymously of course).  Or the one Felic told me about the other day in which you share the things you think in church but are too afraid to say? Well, as I was thinking about belief this weekend, I thought it might be fun to start my own little movement, in which we share the things we absolutely believe. It doesn’t have to be about God. Maybe you absolutely believe that raising children is the most fulfilling gift on the planet or that happiness is the most important pursuit. 

I think I’m kind of wondering if we all did this, all alone in our rooms, how short our lists would be. Or if, once we saw our list in writing, we would adjust the way we live. 

So let us have it – and feel free to be anonymous – what do you absolutely believe?

I’ve since realized that job probably has all its own stresses, and I was only seeing one of her “hats” at the time anyway. Still, don’t we all wonder about other jobs out there? I think, “Where do you work?” is sometimes code for, “How much do you dread Monday mornings, do you get paid more than me, and do you work there on purpose or just because it’s something you fell into?”

I think one reason I sometimes wish I were an actress is because I could try on so many different jobs. So today is, “I’m not a dentist, but I play one on t.v.” Day.

I’d like to be a teacher in a test run sort of way. I’m pretty sure it’s not my gifting, but I’d like to try it out for a while. I’m thinking high school Language Arts. But elementary school sounds tempting every now and then when I’m feeling particularly nurturing.

I’d like to be Kelly, as in, “Regis and…”. 

I’d like to be a stay-at-home, full time novelist.

A stewardess. There’s something kind of tempting about flying all day long.

Every now and then, when I’m feeling super giving and brave, I want to open a preschool based on the principles in the book For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macauley (with lots of imaginative playtime and the reading aloud of great literary works – very cool).

And one more: I’ve always wondered if I could make a go of my very own business – like a book store or a quaint little coffee shop.

And now it’s your turn again. What jobs do you wonder about sometimes?

I’ve always wanted to start a blog with this sentence: In a former life, I was a hermit. I have this intense love for (every now and then) having the whole house all to myself. When I’m at a party, I like to slip away to a quiet room now and then and take in the happiness of the crowded noises far away but otherwise find my own thoughts again. And sometimes I think that if I was all alone all the time, I would eventually think out the answers to everything. 

The truth is – that’s all craziness. I relish alone time now because the rest of my days and moments are loud and giggly and filled with boys (big and little). And no one comes to all the answers all alone. I firmly believe we need to bump up against others’ thoughts and ideas in order to reach complete ones. So, it’s only in those sudden alone and quiet moments when I think it would be nice to experience living in some mountain cabin somewhere alone, from which I would only emerge now and then to go to town for supplies (i.e., more pen and paper (Oh, the writing I’d do!!), and to set the locals talking about lovely, mysterious me.

However, there are other things I truly would like to one day experience for myself. Exhibit A: The streets of New York City. There’s a little part of me that believes I really could have lived there (you know, in another life), worked there, even raised children there. (“Sarah Jessica Parker is doing it!”) And I want to at least visit there and find out for myself if I’m insane. (I want to try cupcakes a la Katie Holmes, a Gray’s Papaya hot dog (from Fools Rush In) and find a used bookstore I like and visit the part of Central Park that matches the picture Charity took recently and which now sits on my desktop. (You can see the tall buildings just over the green, leafy trees).

I also think I could have been a world traveler. The 17-year-old me would disagree. But I’ve changed on that. And now I picture myself in Ireland – with no purpose at all; Paris, Venice, and Greece for all the things you hear about and know exist but really want to see for yourself; and third world countries to visit the orphanages I’m supporting with my independent wealth and the hundreds of children I’m sponsoring through World Vision. The full extent of that traveling is a little beyond my means, my time allowances, and my husband’s agreement – in this lifetime. But I still feel determined to visit more places like that before I die. I believe discovering beautiful Ireland, exploring Paris once, and embracing for myself the intense need of children across the world – I believe all that would change me. And I want to experience it for myself.

One more for me – and then it’s your turn. Prince Edward Island. I definitely want to experience for myself what Lover’s Lane really looked like and what a walk to school would have truly been. And what it sounds like to live near the shore. And why in the world Anne hated November so much.

What about you? What do you hope to one day experience for yourself?