Monday.

I should be at the groceries and organising the laundry. Then it’s off to Pilates, before a quick catch up with a friend over coffee, followed by a busy afternoon of 3 boys, and their post-school moods and issues, their homework, and then onto the dinner dilemma, some scuffles over showers and teeth, prayers muttered with only a small amount of patience left, and finally bed.

This is a very normal ordinary day for me.

But my body isn’t working today. It just isn’t showing up to the party, so I’m sitting down instead with all the above plans discarded, mocking me in their incompleteness.

‘Life is Beautiful’ by the Afters is playing on my iPod and outside my windows, which I notice need cleaning, is my hedge of flowering white camellias.

Looking at them actually makes me want to cry. They are so beautiful and sitting here today means I actually get to see them.

‘Thank you for the camellia’s’ I write in my Gratitude Journal.

I keep it close these days, my gratitude journal, as it is the discipline of looking for things to be thankful for in the ordinary every day that is keeping my heart, mind and perspective where it should be.

Not on what I am not achieving, or on a weary, not-working-as-it-should body. Not on what I don’t have and wish I did. Not on someone else’s reality, that I wish was mine.

No. There is no future in that type of thinking. It only robs me of my joy and smile. It only turns me into a person I don’t want to be.

I’ve kept this journal for a few years now, and today, decide to look back through it, to see what ‘thanks’ I have scrawled in the days and moments that have gone before.

the smell of ripe tomatoes

hanging washing in the sun

my morning coffee

hugs from my boys

blue sky

sleep

showers and moisturiser

medicine for sick kids

my parents

the rain

my boys energy for life

my husbands encouragement

money to pay the bills

my girlfriends

I keep flicking through the pages and it dawns on me that I haven’t written anything of great magnitude or extra-ordinary-ness.

The pages are filled with the small, ordinary every-day things that I fear often go unnoticed when we don’t choose to look for them.

Choosing to see them and take a minute to note them down, turns something I could take for granted into something worth celebrating.

I wish I didn’t need this discipline, I wish it came naturally for me to always see the small and the goodness around me every day and appreciate it, celebrate it.

But my human-ness means I often see the dirty, unfinished, not-complete stuff first. I have a tendency to feel the pain and see my shortcomings and stop there. But it’s not a nice place to sit in for too long.

I want to fight to celebrate something each day, in the midst of an ordinary day of chaos, incompleteness and weakness, there has to be something to give thanks for, something to celebrate.

In ‘How writing can be a spiritual discipline’, Ashley Abramson says;

“When I write, my perspective shifts. The mundane becomes a minefield for inspiration. My daily routine becomes an adventure, an opportunity to look for living hope where others may see none. And when I find that hope, I rejoice in the God who gave it to me. Whether I respond to beauty with a blog post, a song or a prayer, my response is worship because I’m noticing God’s beauty and celebrating it—celebrating Him.” (exceprt from www.relevantmagazine.com/life/how-writing-can-be-spiritual-discipline)

So, despite my mood, my health or circumstance, I want to keep looking for something small each day to celebrate. Not only does it keep my heart in check, but it reminds me to look up to the one who gives me every good thing and to worship Him with my thanks.

One camellia at a time.