Category: JOY in 2012

{Deep breath.}

What a week it has been!  A week of everything except blogging and laundry, I’m afraid.  October is such a whirlwind!  No matter how I try to prevent it, I always feel this way at this time of year.  I was too tired on Sunday night to sit down and type so here I am on Monday instead.

Life is such a paradox sometimes, complex beyond my abilities and yet dazzlingly simple at the same time.  We ran like crazy and slowed down (is that even possible?  And yet we did!) and then it was over.  Like the month will be in two more days.  Like the year will be before I know it.  I swear the last three months of the year are half as long as the first three!

I had so many moments this week when I felt like I was living in a painting.  They were entirely unexpected and they filled in the tiny cracks in my days so beautifully.  I was sitting in my car at a stoplight to turn left and while I waited I looked at the road ahead of me and it struck me how perfect it was.  Old houses along a tree-lined street.  The ancient trees were the perfect height, long limbs stretched out over the road.  A few scattered cars parked along either side and piles of yellow leaves in all the right places.  It looked like a movie set, or a gorgeous photo I would pin on pinterest or a painting I would pause to admire.  I felt so lucky, sitting there in my car, seeing it in real life, composed for me by the master Creator.  It happened again on a rainy morning as I came up a hill.  There, on the hilltop, was the tall white spire of a church, framed behind it by purple and red mountains, and in front of it were trees with leaves of yellow, red and green.  I caught my breath and felt that feeling again.  In an ordinary moment of my day appeared this lovely composition for me to savor.  I should have kept count of how many times this week I stood, looking up at a gorgeous blue autumn sky to watch perfect formations of geese fly overhead.  I watched it, listened to the honking of the geese (one of my favorite sounds) and anchored myself in the moment so the stress and rush of my day could wash away.

I was talking with a friend this week and she asked me how close I was to my quilting goal for 2012.  It reminded me how far behind I am on many of them.  I think back over this year and it’s been a very unique one for our family.  It’s also been one that has stretched me personally and has challenged all of us.  My heart swells with gratitude for the prompting to focus on feeling joy this year, even when it felt like the only thing to be joyful about was that things weren’t worse.  Nothing about my goal has unfolded in the way I hoped or anticipated it would, yet I am so very happy.  It’s not the kind of happiness you feel because you’ve had a lucky break, or because all the little details of your life are falling into place, or because you’ve had some big events work out.  It’s not the kind of happiness you feel when you’ve finished a huge project or when your resources are larger than your demands or when you can stand back and survey your work and see just how much you’ve done.  It’s a different sort of joy that I feel.  It’s a joy I’ve learned to dig for, a contentment I’ve had to choose, and as I’ve practiced doing it over and over again it’s become like a spring, bubbling up and over, running into so many little cracks and moments until, having come from all directions, at last my heart runs over.  And so I see the paintings in the landscape all around me.  My eyes fill with tears of gratitude as I drive my children to school simply because they’re all there with me in the car.   Things are much funnier when we’re joking as a family.  It’s so much easier to let go of negative emotions.  Doing homework with all the children feels like such a privilege.  There are SO MANY things I’m worried about, and yet I am so richly blessed.  It is all a gift from God.  And so, while I would never wish to re-live most of this year, I am forever grateful for my path to joy.

Last week was a continuation of this theme.   We had a Halloween party to go to at our Church.  I always dread the day the costumes come out.  They seem to sneak into all the corners of our home until they’re spread everywhere and by Halloween night no one can decide anymore what they want to wear, if we can still find all the pieces.  I was dreading the entire occasion because Halloween is my least favorite holiday, when I looked around and asked myself how I could re-frame the situation so that I would enjoy it more.  My children love this even if I don’t, and I realized that I could be grateful that someone else was putting on a party we could go to.  Their generosity allowed my children to enjoy something they love.  So I looked up at those geese before I walked in the building and thought about how thankful I could be for this opportunity, then went inside and the evening went great.

We had a weather war going on all week.  Our oldest son, obsessed with snowboarding, now calls snowy weather “good” weather.  The first snowfall came and went with him leaping for joy and my soccer players grumbling and the two sides in an ongoing debate about which opinion was more valid.  I tell ya, these teenagers will argue just about any point!  So with every ray of sunshine, every cloudy sky, every raindrop and snowflake we’ve had plenty of commentary.

We finished our soccer season in a whirlwind of 5 games and four practices in five days for two players.  I’m grateful to be done for a little while and am so proud of my daughters for their efforts.   We finished the first term of the school year with most of my students performing superbly, the oldest two in particular.   The physical therapy seems to be helping my daughter’s Achilles tendons.   On the other hand, unexpected challenges were thrown in our faces which require attention I intended to direct elsewhere.   One of my great parenting lessons is that of learning how to become an effective advocate for my children, especially when they are placed in positions where the (often unfortunate) decisions of adults directly affect their experiences and opportunities.   Much as I dislike it, it appears that skill will be getting some practice time this week.  To quote the band Blue October, “Up, down, up, down.. Life’s like a jump rope!”

Time spent at the physical therapist’s office allowed me to finish two books last week, both of which I enjoyed.  I have three more that ought to be read this week… we’ll see how far I get!  We’re reading a Halloween book as a family this week.  I’ve tried some new recipes lately, which adds a feeling of novelty to the daily task of feeding ten people.  Yesterday we were all in the kitchen doing various things.  Some of us were clearing the table, others filling dishwashers, etc.  Three of us were slicing apples to place in the dehydrator.  My daughter decided to try making cheese popcorn so we also had the cheerful sound of kernels popping on the stove.  It was such an ordinary moment, completely lacking in technology, entertainment, or anything that could be considered “latest and greatest”.  Ordinary, boring, definitely not noteworthy.  And yet, it was perfect.  There we all were, working together, trying something new, talking, being a family.  I stopped and said to the children, “Someday when you’re all grown up, these are the times you’re going to remember.  You’re going to remember Sunday afternoons when we came home from church and ate chips and salsa.  You’re going to remember helping mom fill the dehydrator with apples and learning how to make cheese popcorn.  This isn’t fancy, but this is it, guys.  This is what you’re going to remember.  And I predict you will remember it as great.”

So there it was.  Joy in my kitchen.  Joy, with sticky hands from all the apples, with popcorn spilled on my floor, with dirty dishes in my sink, and happy children running in circles.

My heart is full.
Jennifer

I am so grateful to have lived this week.  My heart is full.

The week was one of our busiest, full of far away soccer games, doctor’s appointments, end of term homework assignments and projects, parties, concerts, phone calls, arranging schedules for the rest of the year, deadlines, driving, driving, driving and so forth.  By Tuesday afternoon I’d resigned myself to what I call a “checklist week”, a week when every day had a very long list of things I had to do and none of them were optional or frivolous.  Almost every “extra” in life fell right off the list.   Lots of things are happening in the 11th hour before the deadline, not because we didn’t see it coming, but simply because the hours were so packed with other things that we couldn’t do anything about it until the very last moment.   Several times I felt myself on the verge of tears.  I am running faster than I have strength and I know it, but I cannot slow down.  I operating on far too little sleep and my head has been hurting for days.  When the big event ends or when I get home at night and am tempted to relax and just breathe I’ve had to stop myself, consult the list of bare essentials and get back to work.

And yet it was a wonderful week.  Wonderful because I had to dig deep and deal with it, and find joy in the process.  Because of this I have all these memories of little moments throughout the week when I took a deep breath and grounded myself in the moment.

There was the moment at the gas station while I waited to fill my tank for the 3rd time this week.  I closed my eyes, listened to the sound of brittle leaves blowing across the parking lot, focused on what it felt like to feel the breeze on my face and the sun on my back.  I thought about how great it was that I was standing on my own two feet, up to my neck in work and stresses, and yet I was able to function and do my own life’s work.  I stood there and focused on all these things and as I did it my mind slowed and I marveled that I am here, alive, living my very own life, and it is awesome.

There was the moment when I knelt with my ten year old daughter to pray with her about something she had lost.  She sat there and cried and I put my arms around her and held her and thought to myself, “Remember this.  Remember the room, remember the smell of her hair as I kissed her head, remember how it feels to hold her, remember these tears of love pricking at my eyes.  Remember this.”  There was the moment when I snuggled with my three year old as her body slowly stopped shaking after a fairly major tantrum.  I sang a song to her and it prompted very unique questions from her about Jesus and his powers, whether he has a car or if he can just run really fast, and then, interestingly, about herself and if she has any of the same powers.  Again there was the thought, “Remember this.  Every bit of it.”  When my six year old sat on my lap to do some online homework I tried to memorize him.  When my oldest daughter and I had to race to Target at 9:48 p.m. in search of a pair of black dress shoes that fit, I was tempted to feel irritated.  I reminded myself, “You have to do this, whether you like it or not, so why not enjoy it?”  And we did.  We laughed, walked fast, tried on shoes in record time and then found, in true small miracle fashion, the only pair in the store in her size and in the right color, made it back out of the store at 9:59 as they closed, went home, and then worked together to pin up the hem on the choir dress that had just arrived in time for the concert the following day.  We felt grateful for what was working out instead of unhappy about the lateness of the hour or the frustration of a rushed errand.  When I waited too long in a doctor’s office with my son, I enjoyed being with him instead of looking at the clock.  I could do nothing about the delay, but I could do something to improve the time I was spending with this young man who now towers over me and who will, in just a couple more years, be grown and gone.

Yesterday afternoon as I drove to a soccer game, with a birthday party for my daughter falling immediately after it and the feeling that I still had lots of loose ends to wrap up, I felt the tears start coming.  I knew I couldn’t go there, so instead I started quoting Isaiah  40:28-31 aloud, over and over again until the tidal wave of “I’m not good enough” subsided and left in it’s place the sure knowledge that indeed, the “everlasting God…fainteth not, neither is weary.”   Tonight there was the sound of eight children in the same van as we drove home from my brother’s house.   They started playing the alphabet game and when they got to “Q” our ten year old jokingly yelled, “Look!  There’s a Q in college!  Quollege!”  And then we all laughed and the jokes started flowing about getting “a quality education in quollege” which then gave way to a hilarious conversation in which every “C” and “K” in every word were replaced with the “qu” sound.  Oh, we laughed so hard!  And I thought to myself as we did it, “This is it.  These are things I want to remember.  This is happiness, right here in our own car, regardless of all the other strains and stresses that are part of our lives.”   Every time I mentally stepped outside myself to notice what was going on around me, I felt myself calm down.  The worries of 30 minutes from now and two hours from now and tomorrow all melted away and left me with “now” and I found, every time, that I could handle “now.”  It was a good feeling.

So, tonight I feel full of thanks for such a hard, busy week.  I know I can’t keep this up; I’ll get sick if I can’t slow things down soon.   But the lingering feelings are so positive that I feel kind of awestruck.  Please don’t think I’m bragging.  I feel more like a beggar, for that is exactly what I’ve been doing on my knees and in my heart all week.  My prayers were answered in such an interesting way.  I still felt the full weight of the load.  Nothing was unexpectedly lifted or made easier.  The week remained complicated and little things still went wrong.  But in the midst of these things, two things happened.  First, I watched my husband step in and we were an awesome team, communicating well about what was most important and what we could do to help each other stay calm, then following through immediately on the answers.  Second, we were made strong enough.

I was made strong enough.  The Lord made me strong enough to get through it, to finish one more task, to get up early one more time, to stay up late once more, to help with the project again, and He gave me power to do all these things cheerfully.  As I tried to focus on the moment and just do my best instead of looking too far ahead, I experienced this fire hose of grace that filled in all the gaps and gave me the ability to smile and laugh, to hug and compliment,  express gratitude and compliments.  THAT was the miracle.   It was also where the joy poured in.

I have 7 or 8 loads of clean laundry waiting to be folded.  The towels need to be washed.  The bathrooms are dirty again.  This week’s calendar is as bad as last week.  There is a long list of things to worry about.  Yet it will all work out.  In a hundred ways, God reminded me this week that He knows me and will help me.  He gave me strength in ways that only I would notice.  I am so grateful for this help.  Grateful for what I’ve learned.  Grateful for all the things I remembered.  Grateful to be alive.

Oh, happy day!
Jennifer

Yesterday I was walking out of a local quilt shop when a stab of loneliness hit me.  I had just watched three women standing together around the cutting table laughing, talking about their lives, talking about someone they all knew who has inspired them over the years, sharing a common interest together.  I watched them and felt so lonely!  I drove away thinking about how many friendships, especially groups, I’ve let go of in the past few years during my struggle to stay afloat as I learn how to mother eight very different children.  I thought of the book groups I dropped out of, the classes I didn’t take, the luncheons I’ve missed, the chats on the phone that I rarely, if ever, have anymore.  All of a sudden it felt like I’ve paid a terrible price for this family of mine, and it felt hard.  I longed for the community of my first home, for the proximity of a dozen good friends living within two blocks of my house, all of us starting and adding to and raising our children together, driving each other’s children to and from soccer practice, sending samples of new recipes across the street for a fellow cook to taste.  So much in common, so much to talk about, so many easy opportunities to serve each other every single day.  Why did I ever want to leave that?  Then I was honest with myself and admitted that in the muddy years of trying to figure things out, while I’ve wanted so much to be understood and accepted, I’ve also held the world at arm’s length.  Not living up to my own standards, I couldn’t bear opening myself  up to the view of others.  It was really quite strange how these feelings suddenly rose up before me like a monster.

I need to do better.  I’ve tried to resume more friendships this year, but admittedly it was more difficult than I anticipated. My husband’s injury changed the summer, and the school year has run away with me and left many good intentions shriveled and cast aside.   I learned this weekend that I need more of friendship than I’m getting, that I’d like so much to find a close circle of friends that I can belong to once more.

But I’m focusing on feeling happy this year, and the kind of feelings flooding my heart were the opposite of joy.  I remembered what I read early in the year in The Happiness Project and decided to fall back on the good old advice to “act the way you want to feel.”  I went to work and an hour later realized that life was just fine.  Looking back over the week, I recognized so many joyful moments and blessings.  I have a fantastic marriage.  I tried a new recipe for dinner and we loved it.  I got to go outside with my children and watch them play in the leaves while I pulled weeds.  I got to watch the sunset.  Went on a date with my husband.  Took the children to choose pumpkins, then came home for root beer floats.  We made caramel apples.  We made cookies.  I planted a few tulip bulbs.  Started a book.  Helped each child along the path of learning new skills that will help them to solve problems effectively.  Today I laughed really hard at some of the sweet things that little children say and do.  What could I possibly feel bad about?  Yes, I have a wonderful life.  There are certainly things I can adjust, but life is very, very good.

Especially if I focus on the positive and let go of the things that hurt.

My husband tried to take the boys on an overnighter this weekend when one of our cars broke down an hour from home.  Oh well.  My daughter has had pain in her feet for two and a half years, and this week we were fortunate to pinpoint her Achilles as the problem, then get her in to see some great physical therapists.  It was an eventful week in some ways, but nothing we couldn’t handle.  THAT is also a blessing.

I want very much to be good, to be better.  I hope the Lord will help me along this path.  I am grateful for His assistance every day.  And so we start another week with hope in our hearts, trust that we can figure things out, astonishment that October is ending so soon, and happiness in our step.

Have a great week, Jennifer