What kneeling on a department store floor taught me about gratitude
As regular readers know, I am a gratitude ignoramus. This concept that flows so easily through the lives of others never fails to leave me confounded; I stand around scratching my head and analyzing what it means to count your blessings, while other people are actually counting their blessings.
Ann Voskamp (whose blog I’m pretty sure the Bible specifically commands us to read) was the first person to get me thinking about this concept. I would read through her 1,000 Gifts posts and feel the Holy Spirit pouring through my computer screen, beckoning me to adopt the same outlook in my own life. One time I was wiping tears out of my eyes after reading her poetic words of gratitude for all the good things in her life, and I resolved that I would do the same — starting now. I had to go to the grocery store, which seemed like the perfect place to start naming the good things that surround me.
Alas, it only took about three minutes for the whole thing to go off the rails. I arrived at the grocery store entrance, and paused in front of the door to think:
Lord, I am thankful for these automatic sliding doors, which make it so easy to enter this place of abundance! So, I guess you could say I am thankful for the machine that actually slides the door open. And that little laser eye thing that senses movement, which I think is a separate mechanism. So, really, I am thankful for all the engineers of the world, who create such devices. And the manufacturing facilities. Which is not to say that I’m not also grateful to the people who make the glass that not only forms the door but allows us to see into the store! And the people who designed the metal frame that holds it, the miners who mined the materials…
You think I’m kidding.
The people behind me didn’t seem to be feeling particularly thankful as I blocked the entrance with my gratitude paralysis, so I moved inside the store, assuring God that I was thankful for the sign on the door displaying the hours and the paint used to make it, even though I had not specifically mentioned them. Seeing as how I didn’t have a week to complete this store trip, I decided to stop analyzing my physical surroundings and just make a list of things that I had felt particularly grateful for lately. The first few items were:
- Liquor store gift cards
- Earl Campbell sausage
- Techno remixes of rap songs
I was about to add bacon and boxed wine to the list, until it occurred to me that that would leave me with a gratitude list in which 80% of the items were related to alcohol or pork products. Clearly, this exercise was not going to yield the results I had hoped for. So I gave up once again, resigning myself to the occasional thought of, “Hey, thanks!” thrown out in God’s general direction.
Meanwhile, I’ve been having this issue with debilitating stabbing pains in my lower abdomen. The good news is that an emergency room trip that included CAT scans, bloodwork and physical exams showed that I’m the very picture of good health. The bad news is that, umm, I keep having these random, debilitating stabbing pains in my lower abdomen. (As if I’m not socially awkward enough, now I occasionally lean over in agony during polite conversation, grunting out, “It’s cool…The doctor says…I’m…fine…!”) I’m going to continue to seek answers from medical professionals and Dr. Google, but, at least for the short term, I’m stuck with it.
Earlier this week I was at the store Kohl’s with one of my daughters. We were having a great time, trying on clothes, even finding some great sales…and then it hit me. We were walking by the purses section when the familiar red-hot stabbing pain started up again. I’d been worried about this happening in public, and now my fear had come true. This was a particularly bad episode, and it caused me to drop to my knees. To keep from attracting attention to myself, I pretended to take a closer look at the purses on the bottom shelf. It was infuriating. I was trying to do something utterly simple like do a little shopping, and now it had been derailed by this stupid issue over which I evidently have no control.
My daughter knelt down next to me and whispered, “Are you okay?”
I said I was. And when I looked over at her, I thought, Well, at least she’s here with me.
And for whatever reason, that simple thought changed everything. It triggered a cascade of grace, and suddenly, my entire perspective shifted.
…This song they’re playing as background music is actually one of my favorites, was the next thought. And then: How perfect that I happened to be by the purses, so I’d have a good excuse for being on the floor. What a blessing that my mom was able to keep the baby; that it’s me in discomfort instead of my daughter; and that these pains usually don’t last for more than 30 seconds anyway.
Another surge of pain hit, and I made a grunting noise as I dropped the purse I’d been holding. I couldn’t help but smile as it occurred to me that it looked to people passing by like I was having an angrily primal reaction to handbags without exterior pockets. This prompted another round of thoughts of thanksgiving: Thank God for little girls who love to shop with their mommies. For the ER technology that ruled out worries of serious issues. For purses, which help me in my vocation. For living in a land of such abundance that stores like Kohl’s exist. For the fact that I’m even alive to feel this pain at all! I started laughing in between winces, which prompted my daughter to giggle right alongside me.
In my normal mode of thinking, I would not have been able to see past the pain. I would have had a laser focus on my desire to shop without having to deal with this, and would have channeled all my thoughts to that end. But being forced into a moment of surrender prompted me to stop asking “What do I want?”, and looking into my four-year-old daughter’s eyes prompted me to ask instead, “What do I have?” In my previous attempts at gratitude, I wasn’t wrong for being thankful for Earl Campbell sausage and automatic doors at the grocery store — but that was more a generic list of good elements of the created world, rather than a joyful examination of the blessings God puts in my path to draw me closer to himself right here, right now.
There on the floor at Kohl’s, giggling behind a stand of purses with my daughter, I learned that gratitude is an acknowledgment of a relationship more than it is a dry list of goods. It’s a thank-you note for the stepping stones that God places in our paths to show us the way to heaven; a willful act of seeing the hand of God at work in our lives, even when our circumstances aren’t ideal.
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(And, while we’re talking about Ann Voskamp, grab a box of Kleenex and go read about what she’s doing in Ecuador, and prayerfully consider if you feel led to help her in this mission.)
What I did this weekend
For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, I want to introduce you to my friends, the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. Today I went to a party to welcome some of the sisters back to the Austin area after they’d been a the mother house in Ann Arbor for the summer, and I was reminded of just how wonderful this order is.
More than one of the sisters has told me that they have to plan for their trips to the grocery store to take double the time they might expect, because so many people stop them and want to talk to them about faith. Aside from all the amazing work they’re doing, the simple fact that these women are out in the world, wearing their full habits, is an incredible witness in and of itself.
Here I am with Sister Elizabeth Ann, her baby nephew, and baby Pamela Scholastica. I had the privilege of talking to Sister Elizabeth Ann’s identical twin sister, Dr. Katie O’Reilly, at the party as well — you can read the story of how they shared similar paths to totally different vocations here.
My dad came, and took on the arduous task of being Chief Baby Holder.
And my aunt, Lisa Whitney, came all the way from Atlanta just to help us out this weekend since she knew it would be a crazy one (pictured here with Sister Jude Andrew). I’m so fortunate to have such supportive family members.
The party was also a great chance to meet up with some local folks like my friend Martina Kreitzer, who’s a contributor to the Austin Catholic New Media blog, as well as being a founder of a great new group blog called Catholic Sistas (if you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out!)
Even though it’s not a great shot, I just had to post this picture of Fr. Daniel Liu, a super sharp young priest who is one of the many reasons that the Diocese of Austin is a great place to be.
Oh no, it’s Sister Maria Rosario WITH A BIG SCARY OGRE!!!! Oh, wait…that’s just me.
My three-year-old daughter loved chatting with Sister Maria Christi.
Sister Elizabeth Ann told us about the plans they have for a new convent in the Austin area, assuming they can raise the money they need. We’re incredibly fortunate to have them in our area.
At the end of the event, the sisters regaled us with a gorgeous song that was actually written by one of the sisters!
I am so amazed by the Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. I first encountered them that day I was locked out of the Adoration chapel, and have been a big supporter of theirs ever since. If you’d like to find out more about the great work that these sisters are doing, how you can support them, or how you can find out if you’re called to be one of them, visit their website here!
How I learned to love housework
I am not a naturally tidy person. To put it bluntly: I’m kind of a slob. It’s hard to say whether this is due more to my laziness or to my lack of attention to detail, but I’m the type of person who can step over piles of dirty laundry without noticing them, who forgets to sweep the kitchen floor until there’s an audible crunch when I walk across it.
So you can imagine that when I first left the career world to become a housewife after my son was born, things didn’t go smoothly. I found keeping house frustrating, since the ratio of effort to payoff just wasn’t there for me. A spotless kitchen wasn’t that different to me than a kitchen with dishes stacked next to the sink and a mystery sticky substance coating the floor in front of the fridge, so the work of getting it clean seemed like a waste of time. Sometimes my husband would come home from work and gently mention that he might clean up a bit, and I’d be baffled. What was there to clean? The house seemed fine to me. Then I’d watch him pick up a dirty sock off the living room floor, vacuum some crushed Cheerios from the rug, remove some empty sippy cups and crumb-covered plates from the side table. With each item I’d say, “Oh, that? That bothers you?”
I had settled into a sort of routine of shuffling around the house and doing the bare minimum, occasionally stopping to sigh and ask myself what other arbitrary things might need to be done. I didn’t resent the work, but I did think it was mostly pointless, and I never did it because I wanted to; I’d just put myself in the mindset of imagining what a neat freak would do, and mimic that.
And then I found God, and everything changed.
One of the most surprising results of my conversion has been that I’ve developed a love of housework. I’ve seen a complete reversal in my old attitudes about the tasks involved with keeping the house in order. This doesn’t mean that my house is super clean all the time — I still have that lack of attention to detail and the whole five kids under seven thing that means that my house is messy a lot of the time, but the difference is that I now value a clean house, and I almost always enjoy doing what it takes to get it that way.
How did God change that? Part of it is probably due to the Christian emphasis on service and selflessness, that I’ve come to understand that the path to joy is a path that involves work and personal sacrifice. Some of it might be that it’s easier to manage the craziness of having a bunch of little kids when things are clean. But the biggest thing that changed for me was when I came to understand that order is of God, and that the fight against chaos is a fight for good.
When I was first reading books about theology, the idea of God bringing order from chaos deeply resonated with me. I’d always had a love of astronomy and physics, and when I thought of clouds of scattered dust coalescing into planets, smatterings of planets organizing themselves around a sun in a dance carefully orchestrated by the laws of gravity, I could see the hand of a great Organizer at work. I delved into books that talked about how so much of good and evil falls along the lines of order and chaos: life brings order out of random elements, death returns it to chaos. Peaceful societies are orderly, war is chaotic. What separates beautiful music from annoying noises is the harmonious organization of the notes. And so on. When you take a look at the big picture of the battle of good and evil, you see that so much of what the devil does simply involves destroying order.
At first all of these thoughts were confined to my head and the pages of books, but then I began to see these themes in my daily life. One day I was standing at the sink, rinsing soggy cereal out of bowls and placing them in the dishwasher, and it hit me: I was bringing order out of chaos. Suddenly, the value of this mundane task was no longer subjective. This wasn’t pointless drudgery; it was God’s work! It was a small-scale version of what God did when he created the planets, the galaxies, and life itself. I shut the dishwasher door, wiped down the counters, rinsed the sink clean, and swept the floor. When I stood back to behold the order I had brought to this place, I knew — could feel – that I had won a little battle against evil.
I’m still lazy and will never be one of those women who just can’t sit down because she’s always cleaning something, but I can honeslty say that once I understood the spirituality of housework, I have mostly enjoyed it. The more I’ve meditated on my work as a cooperation with God in the timeless fight against the forces of chaos, the more it has become satisfying to me on a deep level. In fact, some of the best moments in my spiritual life in the past couple of years have been when I was standing in my house after a good cleaning session, looking around at the triumph over the disarray that once reigned, knowing that I just won a victory for God.
Life doesn’t have to be easy to be joyful
Remember my little mention last week that a film crew is coming to capture my every move this Wednesday? My remorse has only grown deeper, my despair more multi-layered, my impending sense of doom more distinct (I now hear the Jaws theme every time I look at that day on the calendar). As of yesterday afternoon, I’d decided that my decision to agree to this must have been a subconscious attempt to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for the WORST IDEA EVER category.
Yesterday evening I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror, and my haggard appearance only reminded me of how very tired, achy and…tired I feel. I looked around the house at all the clutter that’s not going to be cleared out as planned, the holes in the wall that we don’t have the time or energy to fix, the stains in the carpet that will continue to look like a failed modern art experiment was done in my living room. And, most disturbingly, I thought of how I’d huffed and puffed through the day, constantly needing to rest. For a million dollars I couldn’t have pretended to be peppy and positive. And THIS is what is going to be held out as the life of a person of faith?!
After freaking out to a friend, freaking out to my husband, freaking out on Twitter (and, umm, then getting distracted and wasting a bunch of time online), it finally occurred to me to pray. And so I did, and, whatddaya know, it actually calmed me down and gave me a sense of clarity. Almost immediately, the thought occurred to me:
Maybe all that is the point!
Maybe it is exactly in God’s plan that my life would be documented when I don’t have things perfectly under control. Because it’s the only way to highlight what I believe is the biggest visible difference in my life since my conversion: my joy.
If a film crew had wanted to shoot a day in my life eight years ago, it would have been no trouble to present a very appealing image. They could have shown me whipping together a breakfast at 10:00 AM in my downtown loft, using the $10 carton of uber-organic omega-3 free range Himalayan eggs I’d bought at Whole Foods. Then a workout in the building gym with my personal trainer, a walk down Congress Avenue to meet with one of my freelance clients, a stop at Starbucks for a latte, and then back at the loft to meet with the staff we’d hired for one of our summer parties that was to take place on the beautiful rooftop deck that night.
Contrast that to the footage they’ll get tomorrow with me looking as tired as I feel, pregnant with my fifth kid in six years, in a cramped (and messy) house in the ‘burbs where the sounds of screaming are as frequent as the ominous smells of diapers in need of changing. No question, my life is harder now. There is less comfort and more suffering (to use the term loosely), a whole lot less luxury and a whole lot more sacrifice.
Am I happier now? On the whole, absolutely, yes. However, if you were to have polled me on a minute-to-minute basis in 2003 with the question “Are you happy right now?” and conducted the same poll on a minute-to-minute basis last week, I would probably answer in the affirmative less often now than I did then (if nothing else, about half the time my current answer would be, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU BECAUSE EVERYONE IS SCREAMING.”) I am pushed to my limit more often these days than back when I was an atheist.
But here, I believe, is the metric that really matters: Do I have more joy now than I did then? And that’s where the contrast is off the charts.
Joy is something different than happiness, and it’s a whole lot different than surface-level pleasure or physical comfort. It’s something divine in origin, not subject to the ups and downs of human emotions, a kind of ecstatic contentment and explosive peace that can only come from contact with the Source of all life and love himself. I may have more challenges now than I used to, but they also don’t bother me as much as they would have before. When I would be in a mildly bad mood in my old life, it was like my discontent would sink right down to my bones. There was nothing to pad my soul, so even the slightest bumps in the road would rattle me to the core of my being. Now it’s like my soul is bubble-wrapped with joy. Even on the worst day, there’s only so much that my worldly circumstances can get me down. Sure, I still notice and feel and dislike the bad emotions, but they no longer have the power over me that they once did, because underneath it all, where there was once nothingness, there is now joy.
It’s a beautiful thing. But here’s the catch: the more intimately we know Christ, the more joy we’ll have…but Christ is the very embodiment of self-sacrifice, of pouring out oneself for the sake of others. In other words, going to fancy meetings in skyscrapers and driving a nice car and hosting luxurious parties are probably not going to bring you a whole lot of joy. But living a life ordered toward the service of others will. So, even though I have a long way to go in the selflessness department, I make a whole lot more sacrifices for others now than I did before my conversion. And I’m not joyful in spite of that fact, but because of it.
The more I think about this, the more ready I feel to welcome those cameras tomorrow. I think I’m okay with my life being documented the way it really is. Because, if it all goes well, they’ll end up showing a hugely pregnant woman waddling around her not-super-clean house, sometimes getting frustrated with all the chaos, walking past old pictures of herself where she was obviously thinner and richer, and it will be the story of someone who has learned that life doesn’t have to be easy to be joyful.