Be What You Want Most

Happy

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

-Gandhi

Despite all my great perspective on life, despite having walked the valley of the shadow more than once, emerging with flawless self-awareness and zest for life (imagine the sheepish wink), I have been known to say, "I love my life, but I do not like my days.

"There are any number of fairly rational reasons for this sometimes. I mean, people, I know working from home is God's gift to motherhood, but I'm tellin' ya: It's freakin' hard sometimes. In my heart, motherhood is God's give to motherhood, and I don't like muddling it with medical transcription (in the old days) or web writing (in the nowadays). There are always seasons in which it seems both more difficult and more wonderful at the same time, and summer break is one of them. (i.e., Yay! The kids are home with me! Wahoo! We don't have to pay a babysitter because I work from home! And...Ee gads it's difficult to work with three little people hanging around me vacationing.) So the rational reasons come out of things like that.

But mostly, I'm just a world-class grumbler. I firmly believe, way deep down in the unshakeable part, that if you don't like something you should change it or else focus on the reason you're sticking with it in the first place. BUT I FIND THIS SO HARD TO DO. So I forget day in and day out.

But lately. (If I had a piano player behind me, he'd be crankin, the gospel riffs now). But lately, when I go to the first place - the grumbling - I find it so much easier to go to the better place and remember that how I feel about my day is totally and completely up to me. I realize I am the serenity in my own life. It's so strange that serenity is the thing I crave most and the thing that has more often alluded me in life when it's MY NAME. But I think of that as the coolest gift now, because I get to learn to be it.

For me, it's serenity. What is it for you? Is it love? That's a big one I think. Do you ever feel there's not enough love in life? Maybe your spouse doesn't appreciate you like he should or your friends don't call enough. I think the answer is the same for you. Be the love you want in your life. Be for someone else what you wish they'd be for you. I could be wrong, but I think, I think, it will come right back to you when you do it.

And maybe it's happiness. We all want that, I think. I don't think we admit it very often. The Christian circle I'm from doesn't admit it very often. And I mean that in the highest form of respect because I think there is a basic Christian truth that perhaps our own happiness is not the most important thing in life or the thing we're supposed to strive toward. But I look for it anyway. I think we all do. And I try to look for it in a way that seems God-like, that seems like something he might endorse. You know what I mean - the feeling that you're doing what you're supposed to do, serving where you're supposed to serve, loving the people you're supposed to love. That all brings happiness, and it's a happiness I think even the really good Christians try to find. And anyway, if it's happiness for you - if that's the thing that often seems to be beyond your grasp, find a way to be it instead. I think there must be a way.

I breathe like yoga, I listen to my latest favorite song, I clean a shelf, I write. These are some of the ways I become my own serenity. What do you want most? And what can you do to become it?