{joy & thanks}
The idea of gratitude is easily dubbed if you ask me. It's misrepresented on a whole lotta levels. It's our quick draw for shootin' up the bad vibes around in us. Inside our chambers, we load ammunition for all the wrong reasons. Bullets locked & cocked & ready just to shoot out with the intent of firing someone else down with the hope to make ourselves feel better.
Maybe that's not the gun you carry. And if it's not, then in my best country western, "Pardon me, little lady." It's just that social media can be a place where people boast of blessings and sometimes, just sometimes in the middle of firing that gun of ours, I wonder if we're forgetting to feel them. It's almost out of sheer panic or for the sake of perfection, we pop-fire and ratta-tat-tat neglecting the very energy and power of what's inside occupying our very chambers.
Energy & power.
This summer I read a book by Brene Brown. It was entitled Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent & Lead. It was a really big book jam packed with really good stuff. Stuff I had to re-read. And re-think. And re-think some more. It was hard to read. Hard in the sense that I had to really consider who I am and where I'm headed in this try-hard life. These considerations mattered for the sake of me, but also for the sake of the people I am raising. For the two little men I am growing and the husband I am learning how to love more and in better ways.
My homegirl, Claire Wood, recommended to me another book written by Dr. Brown this summer. It's composition was much simpler in size and brought information to you in more of a workable format. Not so much homeworky, but so very much applicable to every day life. I just so happened to score a copy of this very book at McCay's Used Books last month. It's entitled The Gifts of Imperfection.
This book along with Daring Greatly has been just the gun safety course I have needed. The words of Dr. Brown are embedding themselves into a lifestyle I am learning to manage with equal parts grace and gratitude.
Being a person who battles perfection , I cannot adequately express the healing these books are gifting me. Loving inside feels so good to keep hold of. That feeling. That absolutely joyful feeling is so very worth safe keeping. The energy & power there within those feelings is exactly what Dr. Brown states that sustains us "during the inevitable hard times".
Because times are hard. And joy isn't an empty feeling. It's not the blessings we turn into bullets to pelt out at others to make us artificially above and them authentically down.
It's the reminders that there in our very small, in our everyday, is something worth keeping in your chamber. It sits inside you loaded and ready to fire back energy & power at the dark when it creeps onto your doorstep like the robber he most certainly is.
And it's important that we all are prepared for those stealers of light. They come in the form of depression, hormones, financial woes, death, unfair situations...the list is endless really. But in keeping our gun loaded with the good, we can sustain life. And shoot back light with all that we have within.
I am working on keeping. Moreover, I am working on feeling. Not just letting my blessing bullets fire, but holding them in real tight against my heart and concentrating on their goodness in my life. God spoils everyday. I'm working on finding my spoils and savoring them even still.
- Eli on the floor playing army while I made dinner Monday night.
- Bota Box of Malbec
- Taking down Halloween with the boys. Talking about how excited we will be to see these decorations again.
- Red potatoes & tiny green peas
- Thanksgiving--our home is readying itself for our families we love.
- Impromptu forts midday
- Early mornings alone in my kitchen
- A husband working in the dark to clean my car
- 2 sons who help me run my small business
My week. My bullets. I feel them nestled & locked inside my chamber. And I am thankful.
