Mama said there’ll be days like this. So the old song says. I’ve used this line many times over the course of the past 767 days. Sometimes I was writing about really difficult, challenging days, but most of the time I was referring to the more mundane trying, aggravating days during which nothing particularly bad happened, but nothing particularly good did either. Yet, even in the midst of these days there are plenty of things to be thankful for.
I woke up this morning a little off balance. I am not sure what I want to write this morning, I scrawled in my journal at 5:54 a.m., I am feeling restless–can’t really describe it. The feeling persisted off and on (mostly on) throughout the entire day–through meetings and activities. And while for the most part I managed to function normally, by the end of the work day it was all I could do to get myself packed up, to my car, and on the road for home. The commute was uneventful, but 75 minutes of uneventfulness didn’t diminish the feeling much, so here I am describing it in at the end of the day in very much the same terms as I first wrote about it this morning.
I’ve written about this sense of restlessness before; not solely my own, but an overall pattern I’ve been noticing among a number of people around me. There’s a sense of unsettledness like something is sort of out of alignment, not quite right, but not enough to totally throw everything off-kilter. I even checked the website of an astrologer I know, reading her predictions for a topsy-turvy August and shaking my head over the wildness. My vacation just two weeks ago is now a very distant memory, as if it never happened, though I still have the tan lines to prove I was indeed at the beach.
I am grateful this evening for the assurance I have that no matter how tired and cranky and restless I get there is a resilient, perseverant, calm and unflappable place in the center of my being and every once in a while I actually touch it and draw upon it. Even when I believe I’ve gotten to “my wit’s end,” I can still draw up from somewhere the strength I need to get through the tough moments, sometimes barely hanging on until the storm passes. I may not always sail through, but I always get through and learn a little bit more of what I’m made of.
I am listening to an audiobook right now that is set during the time of slavery in this country. I am a descendent of slavery on my father’s side of the family for certain and very likely on my mother’s side as well. I don’t have to go back very far into my family history to find it: my great, great grandparents on my father’s side were slaves, and my grandfather’s grandfather was a white man, likely the master of the plantation where my great, great grandmother was a slave. If I ever need a reminder that I come from a long line of people who know how to persist, how to survive against difficulties which I can scarcely imagine, I need only look back a few generations to find strength deeply rooted in my family history. I come by it honestly.
So when I experience the occasional “bad” day, I can easily put it into perspective. I am grateful for the many blessings that surround me, that weave their way throughout the tapestry of my life. If I were to pick up a rock and fling it in any direction in a 360 degree radius around me, there’s no way I could miss hitting some kind of blessing. Of course, I’m in the house and won’t be throwing any rocks (for which Honor is most appreciative), but you get my point. Everywhere I look as I scan the room around me, from the relatively expensive laptop resting on my thighs, to the comfortable and safe room I’m sitting in writing, to all the many material blessings all around me, I am grateful. For waking me up this morning having full use of my body and relatively sound mental faculties, I am grateful. I could mentally walk through my entire day from waking unexpectedly early at ten minutes to five until this present moment as I sit here typing, I would lose count of the blessings. So yes, Mama said there’ll be days like this, but I also know Mama wasn’t worried that I wouldn’t know what to do about them. Amen, Mama.
