Living Deliberately

Authenticity. Living deliberately. I watched an interview with Ann Voskamp, author of one of my favorite books ever, One Thousand Gifts. One phrase that kept surfacing was to live deliberately. She said it was not her default nature to live with gratitude and joy. So making the deliberate decision to choose gratitude becomes her lifelong gift to her family and friends. This isn't the lying that socially correct women, myself definitely included, have decided to Implement in our daily lives. When someone asks how I feel, I don't think Ann meant.... Or rather God meant, for us to automatically blurt "fine" when our back is killing us, when a parent or child or both are ill.

 What should we say? One of my personal issues is the type of Minnie Martyr who details a list of ailments with a smile filled with pain and then says, "but it's okay...I'm just fine... Truly fine."   That reminds me of the cutest cartoon with a bunch of dead cows all turned upside down. The cows all had comments coming from their lips; they were saying one and all, " I'm fine.... Just fine,"  So to honestly determine what the question, "How are you?" really means----- that takes divine intervention to let us see what the good truly is all around us. By never negating the honest problems we face yet praising to high heaven for the marvelous gifts as well, we become just the grateful daughters God intended.

 Where am I headed with this? Nobody expected or wanted or deserved a rant or a lecture when you clicked here. I just feel blessed, that's all... I truly am very blessed to live on this beautiful part of America, to have lovely family, and supremely loyal friends. My wish list and cranky lists are full sometimes. I could sit here and chronicle hundreds of things I should do today or in the next five weeks.... A person filled with gratitude doesn't become blind or oblivious to pain around her. Or in her. But it's just not the focus of life any more if we choose gratitude. So, on this second day of summer I felt like talking about the good stuff... Have a beautiful day... 

 My latest artistic project has been to reclaim the little salesman sample ice cream churn from the top of Mom's freezer... What says summer more than hand cranked ice cream? If we can't eat it, we can decorate with it! Have a beautiful weekend....