14,000 Things to be Happy About

Years and years ago, my beloved college friend J gave me a thick little pudgy book titled 14,000 Things to be Happy About.  I don't read it cover to cover; it's not that kind of book.  It's the kind of book you grab, flip to some random page, and read.  I used to keep a highlighter near it, and when an item in the list caught my eye, I'd highlight it.  I also dog-ear the pages that are my favorite.  Today's blog is in honor of this little white book that has kept me company for ten years now.  These are the things I am happy about, in this moment and on this Saturday:

Soft spring rain.
The feel of the warm, skinny vanilla latte cup in my hand.
Starbucks colors (warm oranges and browns and yellows)
Writing "to do" lists on brown, recycled paper napkins.
Cinnamon-chip scones.
Mellow music by Sting and Joan Collins.
Good hair days.
The passage in I Corinthians that promises that "when the perfect comes, the imperfect will disappear" (my Rosina-translation)
My favorite pen.
A silent cell phone.  Lol.


"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think.  Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.  ~A.A. Milne

Hopefulness

I felt it shelter to speak to you.  ~Emily Dickinson


Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.  "Pooh!" he whispered.  "Yes, Piglet?"  "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw.  "I just wanted to be sure of you."  ~A.A. Milne

Short, Fat, and Proud of That...

Pooh-bear:  making pudgy cute for almost a hundred years.

Lessons Learned from Pooh-Bear

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.--Sydney J. Harris

"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

-- Winnie the Pooh


Very, very recently, I have been struggling painfully with honesty.  Having always surrounded myself by close friends who have integrity and authenticity, and having grown up in a home where honesty was always given and received in love, I have been muddling through circumstances recently that have me puzzling over basic premises of relationship.  I don't really know what to do when someone doesn't tell the truth -- no -- how to even KNOW when someone isn't telling the truth.  When someone says one thing, but acts in another way, I don't know when to give grace and forgiveness and when to walk away.  I feel confused; as a Christ-follower, I want to treat people the way that I want to be treated.  I want my life to be one that offers grace and forgiveness.  But where does grace end and foolishness begin?  It's incredibly distressing to realize that I can't tell the difference between authenticity and manipulation.  It's horrifying to think that I trusted someone absolutely, and now I'm finding that I was absolutely wrong to do so.  


Maturing means not lying to myself.  As much as I want to believe that all was rosy and bright before the recent storms, I can't distance my mind from knowing that I am seeing more Truth now that I did for all those months.  


My pastors are preaching through Jonah, and a few weeks ago, Kyle said something along the lines of "It's in the storms of life that we behave as we really are; the person you are in the storm says a lot about who you are in the calm."  That's probably a bad paraphrase, but I'm thankful that I know the One who walks with me through every storm.  I hope that I can reflect Him truthfully in my actions and words, and my prayer is to figure out this complicated marriage of wisdom and grace...