A Year in Review

year in review 2013

It's February and it has now been a year.  One year since I decided on a cold day in the mountains, alone with my thoughts, huddled in my bed while the baby slept and the rest of my family happily skied, that something needed to change.  I was lonely and was longing for the company of someone that I really enjoyed...someone who had passions and ideas, verve and energy. Someone who is well read.  Someone who can complete a thought and compose connected text.  Someone who is too busy filling herself up with meaningful pursuits and enriching relationships to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Bravo and Kardashian (guilty). In short, I was deeply missing the me I longed to be.

Two things were decided in that moment.  One.  I needed a word of the year to guide me back to myself.  A touchstone to keep me focused. (Hello transformation!)  Two.  My mind and my soul needed some refreshing, and the water that could quench that thirst can only be found through something creative. For me, that means engaging with words.  Reading.  Writing.  Listening.  Speaking.  Words feed my soul, and I had been feeding it an anemic diet of Twitter and Facebook and celebrity gossip sites for far too long. I was tired and spent and postpartum and wanted to go mindless for awhile.  Little did I realize that it would, in fact, empty my mind.

I decided that I needed a framework to operate within...a structure to make me feel more bold.  Strictly personal essays seemed way too daunting and were to be avoided at all costs.   And I am certainly not an expert in anything.  What did I love?  Words.  Reading and writing.  How could I express those passions creatively?  Through a project, of some sort.  I wondered, what would it look like if I wrote about what I read for an entire year?  Because, in the words of Adrienne Rich,

I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove warming milk, 

a crying child on your shoulder,

 a book in your hand 

because life is short and you too are thirsty.

Because of my thirst, A Year by the Books was born.

I began with lofty goals and grand intentions.  I was going to write about EVERY SINGLE THING I READ FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR.  I would post AT LEAST once a week.  I would wake up EVERY SINGLE DAY an hour earlier than my boys so I could write or read.

Here's what happened instead.

I kept sleeping as long as those boys were sleeping.  This past year, waking up early would have been my undoing.

Well.  Who am I kidding?   I need sleep like cake needs frosting.  We are just better together.

I posted twenty times.  Not exactly once a week.

I didn't even come CLOSE to writing about everything that I read.

And as it turns out, I can't write about what I read without getting personal.  In fact, most of what I wrote could be characterized as a form of personal essay.  I even got so bold to submit an essay to a magazine...and it was accepted! (More to come on that soon).

Historically, if things got complicated or weren't adhering to my expectations, I would want to throw in the towel.  As a rule, I tend to not give myself much grace.  But, though this project, I learned that just because it's not perfect doesn't mean that I should shut it down.  I can break my own rules, things don't have to go exactly according to plan, and maybe the way things actually unfold is the way things are intended to be.

I read some amazing books this year that refilled my mind with beauty and helped transform me back into something closer to the woman I aspire to be.   I got to know some amazing author/bloggers through their words...Jen Hatmaker, Glennon Melton, Shauna Niequist, Ann Voskamp.  I became reacquainted with old favorites (Barbara Kingsolver!) and met new loves (Maria Semple and Brene Brown).  And through this glorious Internet, I am privileged to read so many people's beautiful writing in nearly real time.  Blogs are a lovely thing for writers and readers.

I have studied the craft of writing and am exploring the techniques and strategies of writers I admire.  I am making it a practice to read aloud to all my children, not just the youngest ones.  And I have learned to give myself a break.  Rome wasn't built in a day.  Habits of mind take awhile to take hold.  I will do what I can, when I can.

What a difference a year makes. As I write, I am winging my way to Utah to ski with my family, and am feeling like a new woman, in no small part to my rededication to a reading and writing life.  And even though it was not perfect, and not prolific, this space served a transforming purpose.  I am thrilled to continue this project.  I can't wait to see what come next.

Edited with BlogPad Pro

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Well.  I know that I am too much of a newbie to really have earned the right to do a "throwback" post. . . but, here it is.  The idea and beauty of eucharisteo has profoundly impacted me.  I hope that you invite some true thanksgiving, some real eucharisteo, into your holiday.  Happy Thanksgiving, (American) friends.

For me, one of life's greatest joys is waking up to an idea. Truly, deeply, fully waking up.  Especially when that idea is one I've been acquainted with my entire life, but its layers and depths and nuances I have not yet fully explored.   And you know what else I find absolutely delightful?  In the midst of that awakening, you suddenly  encounter the idea absolutelyeverywhere.  Books.  Magazines. Newspapers.  Radio.  Blogs.  From your best friend's lips. In your children's words.  I'm absolutely getting hit over the head with this.

The idea in question?

Eucharisteo.  Grace.  Thanksgiving.  Joy.

In the heart of a difficult season two autumns ago, my sweet friend Kara handed me a book.  She told me she thought that the time might be right to read it.

She said the content might be difficult at first, with everything that was currently swirling around us.  My 63 year old father, who had suffered from early onset dementia for nearly ten years, was dying from recently diagnosed cancer.  I was 17 weeks pregnant with a much desired fourth baby after a heartbreaking miscarriage of twins.  This baby's ultrasounds kept showing that there were some potentially scary abnormalities, which required regular testing and monitoring.   At a routine prenatal exam, I was diagnosed with an enlarged thyroid that needed to be biopsied as soon as possible.  I was teaching a full course load with one new prep at two different universities.  And my three boys each had their own specific struggle that needed my careful attention:  academic issues, emotional upset, developmental concerns.  As I navigated the needs at work and home and traveled frequently to be with my parents, I became robotic, using tunnel vision as a coping mechanism.  I was numb.  I was also exhausted.  Depressed.  And very, very overwhelmed.  On a rare quiet afternoon, I opened the first page of the book Kara thoughtfully gave me and read the opening vignette, which chronicles a raw, honest, lyrical description of the aftermath of a horrible accident that took the life of a child.  I very quickly shut that book with a loud clap.  

As it turned out, I was so not ready to read this book.

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One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, with its placid, stunning cover, sat on my nightstand for the next 18 months.  Staring at me.  I stared back and said not yet not yet not yet.  I was not ready to face whatever this book had to teach me.

I had a lot of healing to do.  Little did I know that if I had picked up this book sooner, my healing would have been hastened.

The book opens with Voskamp, in her unique, lyrical, literary style, exploring the idea of how one can remain faithful, hopeful, and joyful in the midst of immense grief and sorrow, or even in the midst of the monotony of everyday life.  As a Christ-follower, she struggled with how to reconcile God's enduring love and the joy that follows with the terrible circumstances that she had faced in the past (the accidental death of a toddler sister) and present (the deaths of two young nephews).  This led to doubt, grief, depression, and a struggle for her very faith.  Finally, a friend asked her the question that changed her life:

What if you wrote down a thousand things that you love?

Voskamp accepts this dare from her friend and starts scratching down a Gift List.  It is a list of what she calls the "everyday common" that fill her with gratitude.  Her list begins with these:

1. Morning shadows across the old floors
2. Jam piled high on the toast
3. Cry of blue jay from high in the spruce

She continues scrawling down her gifts as she encounters them, on an open notebook in her farmhouse kitchen, the backs of envelopes, and small notebooks she begins to carry.  And as she develops this practice, a habitual practice of gratitude, her life and her faith are transformed.

One Thousand Gifts is unlike anything I've ever read, due to Voskamp's unique voice.  It is beautiful and complicated, like reading poetry in prose form. Her style seems at times to be circuitous and rambling, but she deftly brings all disparate pieces into union at the conclusion of each essay.  Voskamp writes like a painter paints, with lines such as "Autumn comes quietly to wed the countryside.  The maples all down the lane blush and silently disrobe."  The essays take the reader on Voskamp's journey to understand Eucharisteo--grace, thanksgiving, joy-- through wrestling with Scripture, motherhood, anxiety and depression, the hectic pace of modern life, and the crippling injury of a child.  It left this reader breathless with the beauty of her words, her mind, her heart, and her faith.

As the wise Brené Brown says, "Gratitude is a practice."  It's not necessarily natural.  Complaining is more my speed, but I've started the hard work of eucharisteo:  grace begets thanksgiving which results in joy.  And as someone whose constant state these days is a barely suppressed, low-level irritation, I find myself softening into gratitude more and more.  This makes for a more peaceful momma, even in the rough moments, and ultimately, a happier home.

I think that practicing gratitude may be the great lesson of my life.   It is something to be learned, rehearsed, used.  And here is my new realization:  I once thought that gratitude is a disposition, like optimism or introversion.  It is not.  It is something that you cultivate.  I have learned that in order to live the life I feel called to live, I can and must cultivate gratitude.  This includes gratitude for the big things (my marriage) and small things (a hot cup of tea),  and for the "ugly beautiful" things (like the opportunity to mediate an argument between the boys or the quiet introspection that loneliness brings).  Eucharisteo is following me everywhere.  I can't crack a book, go to a lecture, watch a movie, or talk to a friend without gratitude being the overriding theme.  I guess it's true what they say:  when the student is ready, the master appears.

Thanksgiving, in every situation, and every circumstance, is an idea, a practice, a relationship that has been a long time coming for me, and will likely be a lifelong challenge.  But gratitude for gifts given, large and small, bring a change of perspective, a new worldview, and ultimately, JOY.  Choosing thanksgiving, like choosing to love, mends relationships, opens hearts, and for me, helps me to better know God.

I've started my gift list.  (Believe it or not, there's an app for that!) I've reached 129 gifts in three weeks time.  Make that 130.

I'm on my way to one thousand.  And beyond.

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See the little red kite? One of my gifts.

Because picking up a pen isn't painful and ink can be cheap medicine.  And I just might live.

 -Ann Voskamp

Voskamp's work can be found here, including her project,  Joy Dare.