Tonight I went and looked for the moon, but I couldn’t find it. I got in my car, along with my four-legged sidekick, around 8:30 and set off in search of an open enough space from which I could see the super moon that had been promised. This morning when I’d awakened, it was raining. “There goes seeing the super moon,” I said to myself as I watched the steady rain drenching the day. I waited for it to let up before I took my typical Sunday trip to the grocery store. It was cloudy all morning, but in early afternoon there were breaks in the clouds and blue sky began peeking through. By this evening there were equal parts of blue and gray with sunshine breaking through. Still, here at the end of the day when I went to look for the moon, I could not find it.
I confess that I struggled a bit today: I couldn’t seem to get myself together to get much done, though I did manage grocery shopping and laundry, so in that sense the day was not a total loss. It isn’t so much that I had a massive to-do list for the day, it is that at the end of the day I find myself wishing I’d done a little more with it. Alas. As I’ve often quoted from the night time prayer from the New Zealand Prayer Book, “What’s done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.” So I reckon I will do just that: I will let it be.
I am grateful every day, even on those days when I feel disgruntled and cranky. This is a practice, a discipline of sorts, flexing the gratitude muscle when it is difficult. Gratitude, like faith itself, is not simply something that one trots out when everything is going well. It finds its way through the fog and gloom of ambiguity and uncertainty, sometimes being the only clear thing in the midst of confusion. I draw breath, I move my body with relative ease. I have mental capacity and physical dexterity, I am a spiritual being. I have food to nourish me, clothes to cover me, a home to shelter me, family who loves me. These things I can bring to mind without effort and express gratitude for them every day. Every day.
Every night I write this blog. Increasingly I find it difficult to write. More often now I spin the RNG wheel hoping to be inspired by something I’ve previously written. I still manage to find things to zero in on for this daily reflection on the power of gratitude, but some days it’s a struggle. I started writing this blog at a time of significant upheaval and turmoil in my life, at a time when it would have been just as easy to crawl under a rock. I chose not to crawl under the rock–it’s not my style to do that–and instead found ways to remain a positive contributor to the world around me as I prayed that my life would sort itself out. It did.
My life right now is not perfect–far from it. And yet I continue to walk as best I can the path that is laid our before me and to do so with grace and strength. I look across my bedroom to the picture of my aged father saluting into the camera, saluting at me. I salute back, as I often have. I have kept that picture across from my bed always where I can see it, where I can salute back at Dad, assuring him (and myself) that yes, I will soldier on, no matter the struggle. And so it is, and so it shall be, even and perhaps especially when I don’t feel like it.
I am grateful too for those of you who have been on this journey of gratitude with me; some of you have read every day since the beginning nearly two years ago. Thank you for sticking with me through my trials and triumphs, funny times and sad ones, wild rides on Mephistopheles the mechanical bull, and everything in between. I will continue to express my gratitude as best I can for as long as I can until I am released and led to do something different. For so many, many things tonight I give thanks.
