7 Gratitudes: Moments in the Woods

Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one!
But if life were only moments,
Then you’d never know you had one.
– Into the Woods –

Some weeks, life steamrolls you. It runs up behind you, snickering, and then flattens you on the road and you’re left straining your neck, covered in bruises and ripped clothes, muttering “I mean for real? Are you for real? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I have absolutely no control over that steamroller. I can’t predict when it comes. I can’t control the force of it. I can’t change the fact that it’ll leave me a little shabbier than before.

But I can decide to practice gratitude anyway. I can decide to train my eyes to see and name all the tiny, grace-filled moments that scatter even really crappy days. I can learn how to sit up in the dusty road, take a few long breaths, and stand up again, even though there’s definitely another steamroller prepping in a garage a few miles down the road.

This week flattened me a little bit. Thank God for the discipline of gratitude that helps me name the sacredness anyway.

1.
Hot queso and crispy chips, telling stories over a narrow, high top table, laughing so loudly as the opening credits come up that my stomach gets a stitch in it.

2.
Feet hitting dirt on the abandoned, barely maintained side of the Beltline, over polluted urban streams and past bridges smeared with graffiti.

3.
A line of shot glasses on a bar, rainbow colors reflecting out of the dim light. “Chosen family” clinking well gin and Apple Pucker and top shelf whiskey and giggling and gasping at the sticky sweet or nuclear burn left in our throats and on our tongues.

4.
Sun on my bare feet, reading Patricia McKillip on the back porch with the dogs, Georgia thrashers rustling in the bushes in the prettyish kind of a little wilderness that is our backyard.

5.
The circle of community organizers jammed into a too-small living room, squinting to read the tiny print on our voter registration and redistricting laws handouts while we learn how to lobby, who to call, where to protest.

6.
Falling asleep to the Psalms being read out loud on my Bible App, one after another, praise and lament and rescue and fear and delight walking me into sleep.

7.
All the bodies in church standing up together, moving up to take the Body and Blood of Christ. Shuffling into awkwardly merging lines, bumping up against each other – the total stranger, the person who broke your heart last year, the people you pray with every week, the person who you wish the floor would swallow up, the person who makes you very strong martinis when you’re sad. “The Body of Christ, broken for you.” And for you. And for you.

So many sacred moments in these woods.
Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.

This year, we’re counting 7 Gratitudes every week as a blogging community. Follow the above link to see what the rest of us are grateful for this Friday!