A New Year

Things I am thankful for, in no particular order, plus one random query:

1. My children and I are all healthy at the moment. This was a somewhat rare state of affairs during 2012, due to the advent of school attendance and subsequent germ-spreading. Pascal has an inhaler now for his ‘reactive lungs’ but has not actually needed it since it was prescribed. 

2. I’m reading the Thursday Next series. It’s like Dr. Who for lit. nerds. I’d recommend it wholeheartedly but I suspect it takes a certain taste in absurdity to appreciate. Imagine a Venn Diagram with Jane Eyre readers in one circle and Douglas Adams (a la Long Dark Teatime of the Soul) readers in another, and Thursday Next is the overlapping bit. 

3. My personal life in 2012 (heck, 2011 as well) was somewhat tumultuous. It is still rough terrain, but it has taken a definite direction for the better. It’s going to take time though. Hopefully 2013 will see enough development on that front that I will feel confident sharing it with all of you! I’m thankful for God’s continued work in us. Even if all our plans went to hell in a handbasket again, there have been some wonderfully grace-filled moments that I will always be grateful for.

4. Canada. There’s a bunch of ways to put this, but it all comes down to being glad to be home. I hope I get the chance to give back more than I’ve been given. My deeply buried inner patriot is waving the maple leaf with gratitude.  

5. My family! My parents, my siblings, my nieces and nephews…I am so blessed to not only love, but also like all the members of my family and all of the men and women they have married. There isn’t a single sibling  or sibling’s spouse I couldn’t comfortably hang out with for hours on end. And you know what? I get the distinct impression they like me too. 🙂

6. My friends. I don’t know how I came to be so very deeply blessed in the quality of my friends, especially considering how horribly neglectful and self-oriented I can often be! I don’t have many friends locally (just family and clients, I don’t seem to have time for more social life than that) but that is more than made up for by the love, friendship, humor and kindness of my distant friends. You’re all worth the long distance bills many times over, and I’m so sorry for all the times I’ve had to cut a phone call short because of one kid emergency or another!  

7. Concerta and Wellbutrin. I really ought to write a whole post about being diagnosed with ADHD and the difference that has made. Medication doesn’t give me all those skills I didn’t have the developmental tools to acquire before. I’m still playing catch up in so many ways. But it gives me the tools to start, without becoming overwhelmed. I still have years of compensating habits – some bad, some good – to work through. I might even learn to read conversational cues one of these days and become a little less socially awkward!

 

8. My children. They are so very beautiful. I am thrown into awe on a regular basis by the wonder of their existence. They came from me and Liam, and yet they are each an entire universe unto themselves awaiting discovery and actualization. My joy in them recalls me to the joy and reverence that each human person should command from me by virtue of their incommunicable and irreducible being. That’s a mouthful, but at the root of it is awe. Do you know how fantastic it is that you are? How miraculous and precious, regardless of your talents, skills, usefulness or prestige? 

(Re: 7&8. I may not know how to talk to you without boring you silly, interrupting, or staring in blank terror at the prospect of small talk. But man I am wonderstruck by your very existence. Sorry about that. This is why all my best friends are people who think philosophy is small talk).

And the random query:

I want to find a spiritual director. How on earth does one do that? (and how do you know who will be a good fit?)  I’d call the chancery office, except the last time I asked someone there for a reference (for a counselor that time) the name they gave me belonged to a decidedly heterodox quasi-buddhist. 

Hope 2013 is a year of growth and hope for my family and for all of you as well!