I know everyone is having a difficult time right now...every single one of us in our own way. This is one of my harder days lately, and I'd just like to ask for a short prayer. I don't know what else to ask for. And I will be okay. Just a hard day.
I was thinking as I went outside this morning that maybe I just need a lawn chair. Not a deck chair or a fancy chair, just one of those good, old-fashioned webbed-type of lawn chairs. My daddy would buy them, and often, because of how much we used them. They came in pretty tacky colors, but we didn't care. The air got through them and kept us cool. When my sister and I were growing up in Warner Robins, Daddy would bring out the lawn chairs when the weather got warm. Hot - there was no warm in Warner Robins. For a lot of that time we only had a box window fan. So, Daddy would go outside right after supper until dusk and sit in his lawn chair and read. And a lot of the time, we would join him. We could tell when it wasn't a good time to talk to Daddy or ask him for anything. But sometimes, he would point out things in the yard or in the neighborhood or tell a joke. The jokes weren't great, but watching him get tickled as he told them made everything seem better. After the concrete on the driveway would start to cool off, I liked to lie down on my back and look at the clouds followed by the stars starting to peep out. Those were such good memories and yet they were so simple. They didn't require much work or much thought, and we didn't have to bring anything with us to make those times complete. We had no expectations and no disappointments. Well, maybe when it got so dark that mother or daddy would say, "ok, time to go back in."
Another thing that has seemed to help came to me after hearing about my daughter’s talk with my grandson asking him to think of 3 things he's thankful for each morning when he wakes up. They have to be different every day, so he really has to think about it. And she may have said 5 things, but that's a LOT right now. I have a hard time with that exact process, because I can always hear my mother saying, "you have so much to be thankful for." This is, of course, the absolute truth. But it just ends up making me feel guilty - both for having the stuff to be thankful for and for not being happy all the time about it. But, I went to the refrigerator and put my glass under the ice and water dispenser on our refrigerator and I thought, "I really love having cool, fresh water so easily accessible." Now, that can quickly go down a rabbit hole of guilt as well thinking about all of those who don't even know where they can get ANY fresh water, let alone cool. But, just for that moment, I was just purely and simply happy and grateful for that part of my day.
So, maybe that's what I will try. A little different spin on the "what all have I got to be thankful for" mindset; noticing something as it happens and just thinking, "Wow. That is great." And, I’m going out to find myself a cheap lawn chair.
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