Sometimes I get this experience where I have a out of body view of my life. I zoom out and see myself as a foreigner, and stranger, and it makes me see more clearly.
The other night I was at a friends house planning a baby shower and we were chatting over a glass of wine. I zoomed out and saw myself as if I didn’t know me. A stranger with a friend. I feel so much gratitude when I see life that way. I see a person with friendships that have lasted longer and grown deeper than I had known before now. I see myself with moms who are at moments loving and at moments struggling to love mothering. I see myself at work doing something I love and have over time developed a giftedness for, by the grace of God. I see myself with a daughter who is all my dreams come true. I see myself at dinner with Trever and I’m newly shocked at his Jesus hair.
There is so much goodness in the mundane, in the normal things of my life. There is beauty at the park when I’ve pushed Colette on the swings for 20 minutes. Beauty in her contemptment and if I’m aware in the moment, beauty in my own. The very spirit of God is working and moving in a counseling session that is taxing my mind. There is magic when I’m stirring the tomato soup for dinner, the smells, the sounds of my home, the grace of family. The very stuff of life exists in all the normal. I find the better I get at becoming silent the better I become at seeing that.
When my input pauses, when I read and write and do yoga and cook dinner, when I don’t roam social media or put on The Office, my presence gives me life and joy that can be found nowhere else. It can’t be found in dreams of travel or adventure. It really truly can be found only in presence. Even life in Paris would be dull if I wasn’t present to it.
So that’s my word this year – presence. To be where I am, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t bring along with it a new sense of joy.