“Look
at All That I’ve Been Given”
“I don’t care
how many times you fall, if you trip, or if you’re pushed, even if you stumble
over your own two feet… You’re a phoenix.
Just keep rising.”
Wren Purcell
I have a routine in the mornings
now. I get up and feed the cats because
if I don’t, chaos ensues. Then I make
coffee and take it out onto my little wooden deck in the front of my
house. I look out across the Schuylkill
River at the flashing red lights of the broadcast towers in Roxborough on the
hill opposite and I talk to Joe. I have
conversations with him about the dreams I had and my worries or what makes me
laugh. I talk out loud because to do anything
less makes it seem like it doesn’t count somehow. Some days I talk for a long time and some
days I don’t have much to say, but I do it every day now. I always start the conversation out with, “Good
morning Joe… Look at all that I’ve been given.”
I started doing that a few months ago
because in the few minutes it takes me to wake up, get up, feed the cats and
make coffee I had found that I could already get into a selfish headspace. A headspace of ungratefulness and self-centeredness. My thoughts could already start running on a
hamster wheel of what was wrong with my life and how I was a victim of
circumstance and how others had done me wrong.
Seriously, just five minutes or so and negativity would start to take
over. But if I go outside and look at
the lights and the stars and say, “Look at all that I’ve been given.” I can
course correct and reboot. I start to
think about how grateful I am for where I am and who I have in my life still
and who loves me despite myself. There
are so many things I am blessed with and the things that don’t work or need
fixing are like mosquito bites in the grander scheme of things.
A month or so ago I was at a meeting and
the topic centered around step seven which talks about shortcomings and
humility. The speaker was mentioning
that he finds people with humility are the ones with gratitude and they are the
ones who are most attractive as people.
Something about the topic and the shares moved me to tears. I so want to be one of those people. I want to be one of the humble who eschews
thinking about what I have been through and thinking that I am somehow owed
because of it. I want so much to remember
that I am blessed instead and reach my hands out to help others.
This past Saturday I turned 49. My whole, lovely and whacky extended family
took me out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant.
My daughter baked me a chocolate cake from an old recipe of my Aunt’s
that was my favorite growing up. They
made me wear the cheesy sombrero while I blew out the candles and I got some
really thoughtful gifts. My
sixteen-year-old son got a gift card for me for the movies so we can go on a
mother-son date, “because we haven’t gone on a date to the movies in a long
time mom”. My fourteen-year-old
daughter, besides baking the cake, painted the picture of the phoenix attached
to the post and wrote the quote that goes with it. Quite obviously I cried with happiness.
A year ago on my birthday I was hiding
the fact that I was drinking and I didn’t think I was going to reach 50 at the
time. Now… well now I get to start my
day saying, “look at all that I’ve been given.”
