Just like, really really failing. On the first day of 2013 I started a Good Things Jar that truly transformed me. I began it during a season of loneliness and pain, and it moved me into a season of freedom and joy. Sometimes it can be easier to remember what's actually important when you find yourself in a desert.
The first year of the Good Thing Jar was good. Intentionally living with gratitude gave me courage to be a part of the world in a way that I hadn't. I stopped thinking about my fears and started thinking about my joys - I learned how beautiful it was to have my eyes open to good things, and then to receive them gently, like fragile heirlooms I could place on my shelf and care for and give respect to. I filled that jar to bursting with every big and small moment I wanted to thank.
Living with gratitude was beautiful. But then I started forgetting to be grateful.
After gratitude pushed me through anxiety and heartbreak, life started to feel normal again. My days became happy and predictable and routine. So many blessings came into my life unthanked and unacknowledged, and my jar sat empty. I started feeling that all those good things were owed to me. I started to expect them instead of be amazed by them.
This weekend I looked at my empty Good Things Jar and my thought was stern and honest - how dare I. How dare I think that I am beyond gratitude. How dare I let others care for me and not make much of it. How dare I receive one thing from the Lord and act as if it was not done with the most intentional thought and love.
To be honest, I'm embarrassed and I'm disappointed at myself. But the good news is that it's never too late to begin living with gratitude all over again.
And so I'm sitting on my couch, surrounded by blank pieces of paper that I intend to cover with thanks and slip into the jar, because I have to do it. Gratitude is not a creative project that I invest in for a few weeks and then forget. It is something I must defend, it is something important. We should never ever miss the opportunity to be thankful for any dose of love afforded us. We should never ever come to believe that we are owed the best.
We should always always take the time to thank the pieces of our lives for falling where they do.
Here's to being grateful - everyday, all over again.
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(a kind of weird stream-of-consciousness list poem about some random things I'm grateful for from the past few days, to restart my life of thankfulness)
I love
I love the shade of July sun
because it isn’t heat, but color
and I love the way I can miss someone
physically, deep in my gut as if they
were made of the same stuff
and took some. I love how Carole King
playing in my car makes me forget
to care about pride, and I love how
singing makes me more ethereal
than anything else.
I love how the world keeps going
outside my window when I ache
with sleep, and I love having zero
power to make time stop,
or to silence the motion
of everything out there that I love.
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