Counting Our Blessings

My friends, one in particular....  laugh at me because I am so organized and actually enjoy all that entails.  This particular friend I mention is hard wired in a completely different way, which I fully appreciate and return in jest ten fold.  Perhaps its funny that I love making lists.  I love the smell of the school supply aisle! I love sharpening pencils, finding a great pen and don't get me started about highlighters.  That's the best part! Marking through the stuff on my lists.  My friend thinks the time I spend making lists could be spent actually completing something on the list.  But, she doesn't rise at 5:00 a.m.  What a productive time of day! I sit with my favorite coffee mug, and jot down my goals for the day.  They are much more attainable sorted on college ruled paper by priority.  There are many lists.  The typical to do's...  most requiring my chauffer skills, getting us to our appointed places for the day... school, work, sports, etc.  The sidebar including things not to be forgotten, money for a gazillion things at school, permission slips, props for theatre class presentation, papers for this and that, and the list goes on.  I have a list of things to buy.  This includes necessities and things I simply Want.  Funny, how writing what I want will most often find those items getting scratched off the list without purchasing them.  It gives me time to think through my purchases...  how badly do I want it?  Do I actually need it?  Where will I put it?  When will I use it?  What would we go without if I indulge?  I have a list of songs I need to buy.  Yes, I said NEED.  Music is simply necessary, period.  I have a list of places I'd like to go, books I want to read, people I need to write.  I have a list of goals.  I read it often and many times find I am incorporating a postive new choice or habit and its off the list and part of my lifestyle.  I have one really great list....  100 things I want in my partner.  Its not to 100 yet.  I learn things and they end up there.  All of these things are also things I aspire to be myself.  My latest list inspired this post.  I found myself on a perfectly beautiful day, nothing particularly wrong... in a puddle on the floor crying my eyes out.  No, you weren't invited.  Pity parties are for one...  Boo hoo.  I appreciate a good cry, however, I picked myself up and thought, "Get over yourself! You are Blessed."  And I set to making a list.  Sure, we all know the things we are blessed with, the short list of things we daily take for granted.  Our health, families, friends, cars that run, paychecks, functioning body parts... We are thankful for them, but probably don't list them in our prayers as often as we should.  So that's a good place to start to get the tears to stop.  But what if I kept going?  What are all the things in my life that are right?  How many times would I have to sharpen my pencil if I really got serious and wrote down my blessings?  So, without listing them here, I can tell you it is a long list.  It is a list that will continue to grow.  I became so enlightened and lifted that I found myself putting things on the list that I had actually cried about and cursed being in my life.  You know all the things you ask, "Why? Why me? Why now?"  Things that made me sad.  But what if a particular loss is indeed a blessing?  Hmmm....  What if everything that has happened to me was on this one list?  A list of blessings.  Blessed through and through that each moment, tear, laugh, brought me to right now...  I do think the time spent writing these lists is well spent and I shall awake tomorrow, to sit and highlight, make stars, hearts, flowers, underlines and set about my day full of to dos, to "don'ts", and realize the things on each list can all be titled, "Blessings."

The Power of Words

Words...  perhaps they are born as thoughts.  Yes, all those things in our heads and hearts and tummies rolling around...  that's how I landed here.  A place for my thoughts to claim a space of their own.  Maybe someone will read them, but mostly it is a holding tank of sorts.  A place where I can hear my words aloud as I read those thoughts that have tumbled out. Maybe they are thoughts one should keep...  perhaps worthy of sharing.  But certainly, I have learned, you cannot reclaim the spoken word. Funny, the things we remember, spoken to us as children. A universal "mom" language.  I know my mother told me, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."  I now have the thought "I am turning into my mother!" when I have said these very same words to my daughters.  Of course, in a perfect world, we would honor that silence is golden, by biting our tongues.  So many cliche' sayings, but words that yield Power.  I recently watched old videos of me and the girls back in our stay-home-in-our-pjs-all-day-if-we-want-to-days...  throughout most of the videos I am rambling on...  I learned early in my life about death.  When someone close to you leaves this world, they take their knowledge and their stories with them.  Days pass, but your arm reaches for the phone, or your feet patter to their favorite spot on the couch because you want to tell them, "Guess what happened?" or "I love you."  You save the recording on the answering machine because you want to hear their voice.  Our words are our relationships.  The bridge of connection.  So those days of sitting on the floor stacking blocks, dancing, crawling, loving on my girls, I told them everything.  I told him the names of all the people who love them.  Who they were and where and how they loved them.  Gram, from letters and packages from Wisconsin.  My Dad, from Heaven.  Yes, Grandpa Joe loves you through the raindrops on our tin roof.  His favorite sound.  Now they love it, too.  I told them about God. I told them how old they were when they crawled, when they got their first tooth, their first word, their favorite foods, their favorite bed time stories, but mostly I cooed I love you.  I told them hours passed in their infancy where I simply sat and stared at them. Their cherub faces.  Their tiny toes.  Someday, when my stories and my knowledge are gone, they will have my words for all those questions they want to ask.  When they reach for the phone to say, "Mommy.... "  Words should be a gift. Was it my mother who told me "think before you speak..." I'm not sure, but that's certainly something I remember and try to do in each of my relationships.  So as I release my thoughts and read my words I can think of what matters... sometimes words are unnecessary.  Our eyes are the windows to our soul.  Perhaps words can be conveyed not only by the tongue, but by a simple look.  Oh, yes...  I am guilty of parting my mothers long silky hair to find that extra set of eyes she warned me about as a little girl.  I crawled on top of her thinking she must be a superhero of sorts to have an extra set of eyes.  Because she told me!  "I'm watching you!"  There was, of course, a smile in those words. I felt safe knowing my mom could see all things.  I am all about words and emotion and feelings...  I am not an inanimate object.  I joke that should I ever lose my sight, I could find anything because I am so well trained in digging into my oversized purse to find my lipgloss.  You know, one of several tubes, but I know the one I'm after and exactly what that tube feels like.  I could feel my way around for sure.  I feel everything, but am blessed to have all my senses to do so.  I feel love when I see my daughters smile at me.  I feel love when I pat their backs to sleep at night.  I feel love when I hear their giggles.  I feel love when I smell my grandmother's chicken and dumplings.  (Her secret is throwing them over your shoulder into the pot.  Really. Truly.  Learned when I was four.) I feel love when I taste burnt toast on Mothers Day.  And I celebrate all of this with words...  hopefully, words of wisdom.  Hopefully words that will convey love to those I love.  Hopefully, words that will be here long after I am not....  and my girls will carry on.  They will lovingly tease their own children about that extra set of eyes...  they will pray, "Dear God, let my children hear me. I know they are listening. I know they will make good choices because of all I have told them."  Powerful stuff.  Powerful words.  The threads that weave us together. The love my dad filled me with can live on to his great grand children through a bedtime story about raindrops on a tin roof....  years from now.  Words.