Every week, me and some other bloggers team up with Leanna Coyle-Carter to be grateful. Join us and #LinkUp at the link at the bottom of the page!
1.
My coworker jerry rigging the PA system so that Adele blasts through the empty back room of the bar, and we crowd up around the microphone, snapping our fingers and singing horrible harmony and I can’t believe that he knows more of the words than me and we giggle so hysterically that I end up collapsed in tears on the floor.
2.
Mediterranean PubSub, spinach and hummus and olive oil dripping out of the bottom of the paper. Sitting on the metal electric box outside in the sun before work, kicking my boots up against it, making it gong. Strawberries were $1 a box at Publix so of course I’m eating a whole plastic container of them, pretending that I can feel the Vitamin D from the early spring sun soaking into the palms of my hand and my nose and my neck.
3.
We’ve broken into small prayer circles after the larger Psalms study. The three of us have barely met, we’re in different decades, come from different parts of the world, but now we’re crying and praying for each other’s marriages, divorces, health, families, faith. When we finish we’re all wiping up our faces and laughing a little shamefacedly. “What’s your number? What’s your email? Are you on Facebook?” Let the circle be unbroken, Lord.
4.
Thunderstorms during the Ash Wednesday service. The Lord hates nothing He has made, the liturgy whispers. Therefore repent. Thunder cracks above the church. We have sinned against the Lord and against our neighbors, by what we have done, by what we have left undone. The rain comes down in a whoosh, so loud that I can hear it over the musicians playing the final song. Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. As we leave, water is pouring down gutters and washing down the street in a flood, taking dirt and garbage and debris with it into the gutter. Tomorrow, the streets will be clean.
5.
The rosemary plant in my prayer corner that I’m slowly killing (killing rosemary plants seems to be a generational sin for Truman women), but it still smells sharp and warm. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Every time I sit to pray and run my fingers over it I think of the Psalms telling us to remember, remember, remember the goodness of the Lord.
6.
Every morning at 6:30 , my roommate leaves for work, and her super cuddly dingo-dog sneaks into my bedroom, pushing my door open, and hops up onto my bed. She curls up in a little ball up against the backs of my knees, and I always kind of half-wake up, but in a good way when you know you’re not alone and everything is gonna be OK.
7.
A wise gut that is getting wiser, and my discerning chaplaincy mentor who told me that my gut was wiser than I knew it was, and that I didn’t have to understand it to trust it. This week I felt my gut and the Holy Spirit dancing well and wisely together, learning about myself and my vocation and who God is calling me to do and be for and with the world. Maybe these are things I knew before, but I didn’t believe that the knowing was trustworthy. Turns out, she’s is extremely trustworthy. Wisemind isn’t too be meddled with. She knows what she’s doing.
Join us in celebrating gratitude every Friday in 2017!
