hope

saturday hope

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

This morning, I rescued my room from a week of comings and goings, fragmented attention, and a too-tired reckoning of I’ll do it tomorrow. All my best intentions and plans and ordinary habits set aside out of necessity – there simply wasn’t enough of me to go around.

It was a week of life-long held mantras: one day at a time, this to shall pass, first things first, and do the next right thing. Phrases borrowed so many years ago, I no longer know who spoke them or wrote them – I know only of their wisdom, their shelter in the sometimes-storm of everyday living.

How lucky am I to have a husband who knows something about buoyancy and friends who bestow patience like chocolates on a pillow when I most need to rest. This week, I’ve learned how hope arrives in an unassuming cardboard box delivered on the front porch and addressed to me – a reminder sometimes dreams do indeed come true.

So this morning I’m delighted by the sunshine through the bedroom curtains and the pile of pillows on the bench. I move this here, that there, and tuck all the stray bits and pieces of a life well-lived into the laundry hamper. Soon my shoes will line up straight back in the closet, and I’ll thank them for helping me stand upright and steady.

There’s hope still in the anticipation of who’s visiting this afternoon, what I’ll be creating next week, and where I’ll be traveling soon.

One day, one hope at a time.

pause

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been watching hummingbirds.

So busy. So active. A blur. A burst. A vibration. A purr.

Effervescent.

I hear them before I see them, as their hum precedes their presence.

And it is only in their pause I am able to admire their glory.

Sip. Pause. Sip.

Sustenance.

I consider my pace of living.

Only lacking the iridescent patch of green at my throat (and the pause,) I am a hummingbird.

Always more to do, do , do.

Where’s the pause? Where’s the sustenance?

The pause for beauty. A pause for peace. Contemplation. Gratitude. Hope.

It is in the pause the hummingbird sustains itself, sips on enjoyment. Breathes.

A pause in the effervescence to notice the iridescence.

A pause to Be.

Still.

Nourish

and sustain.

who am i

~ onehopefulyear ~ 3 Comments

Who am I today?

Which woman will I be today?

Maybe I’m the woman who faithfully drinks her water, walks the recommended steps, and picks up her book instead of her phone.

Maybe I’m the woman who naps. Or the woman who cries unexpectedly. The woman who loves to bake, aspires to paint watercolors, and reads poetry.

I know I’m the woman who loves deeply, bruises easily, and fears being faulted – for anything – anything at all.

It’s quite likely I’ll be the woman who never quite reaches her goals, who always just misses the mark, who never quite meets the impossibly high expectations she holds for herself.

She often shows up.

But I’ll try not to be the woman who complains. Who criticizes. Who’s impatient.

Instead, I’d like to be the woman who’s grateful. Humble. Hopeful.

And kind.

For sure and certain, today at least, I’m the woman who writes.

start small

~ onehopefulyear ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, it only takes four mixing bowls and thirteen ingredients to lift my mood.

Scoop. Measure. Weigh. Combine . Stir.

Ingredients I control. An outcome I can manage. Actions that make a difference.

This morning my husband came in from the cold, snow, and sleet to a warm house and muffins just out of the oven.

One thing I can do for the benefit of another.

An action – a tiny teaspoon – toward making someone’s world better.

Mood lifted, heart engaged, soul encouraged.

Yes. There is work to be done. Start small.

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
― Edward Everett Hale

a habit of hope

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

As of today, I quit complaining.

My complaints, as I see it, fall into two categories: within my circle of control or beyond it.

Either way, I know what I put out, I’ll almost certainly receive in return. And isn’t it true? Fault-finding is habit forming?

Oh, I know it won’t be easy.

There’s a lot just now that feels worthy of complaint or at least acknowledgement that all is not as it should be. Says me. And make no mistake: I am waving no white flag. Nor am I accepting all things as they are without dreaming of what they could be.

But I do recognize I can be bigger than the sum of my annoyance. My discomfort. My disappointment. My anger. And I do know I can look for ideas, solutions, strategies, and alternatives so I can participate in problem-solving towards solutions.

I know – intellectually at least – complaining only adds to problems and contributes nothing meaningful toward their resolution.

This is a choice. A practice. A promise.

A habit of hope.

just lately

~ onehopefulyear ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been at odds with myself just lately. Many of my conversations, internal.

Maybe it’s a January mood. Maybe it’s a loss of hope. Maybe it’s cumulative and cultural.

Could be . . . everything – everything – feels just too hard.

It’s private. It’s personal. And, I’ll bet, not uncommon.

Or, perhaps, not unexpected given the state of the world.

There’s sorrow. Grief. And disbelief. Fear. Anger. And helplessness.

I suspect I’ve internalized a lot. Set aside a fair amount for processing someday other than today.

So what do I need for and from myself this day?

What does this day – and the people in it – need from me? Where is my time best directed? What is my emotional temperature? My social tolerance?

Do I need music? Silence? Fresh air? Solitude or company? Should I make something? Bake something? Sit, stand, walk . . . kneel?

I would like to be master of this day’s destiny – everything from how I will spend my time to how I’d like to feel. Perhaps today is not so much what I need, as it is about what I do not need.

Truth is, some things CAN (and maybe should) be put off until tomorrow.

Tomorrow. When the sun comes up … and maybe some hope also rises.

looking for hope

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

Early this morning, I looked for hope in the sky.

A chilled breeze ruffled and tossed and danced with our country’s flag mounted on a pole off the front porch.

The same breeze whispered through tall crowns of white pine and hemlock next door and hustled a lone, brown oak leaf across the street.

More than one plane rumbled overhead across the sky, its passengers oblivious to my witness below.

I think about hope this morning in such terms of sight and sound. I wonder, if I kicked off my slippers and walked across the still-green grass if I could feel hope there, grounded as I would be and finding my way across cold and frost and a bit of fear.

I had hoped to hear the call of geese, but this morning chickadees and crows called to me and anyone else who’ll listen.

Like a prayer, I silently promise to listen. Content with whatever hope I can find.

data

~ onehopefulyear ~ 5 Comments

I discovered this morning my watch now measures the amount of time I spend in daylight.

In addition to this new feature, I’m able to access up-to-the-minute functions of my health: my blood oxygen level, how steady I am while walking, the rate at which I climb stairs and how many flights I’ve climbed, the duration and quality of my sleep, my respiratory rate, and my heart rate under a variety of conditions. Among other useful health data checkpoints.

But what I ask myself most often is … how do you feel?

I’ve been keeping my own sort of data. Little colored hearts on a calendar. Each color a measure of how I feel upon waking. Do I feel calm? Anxious? Rested? Happy?

I am (and feel) more than the sum of my data. And if I’m honestly able to answer how I feel, I’m more likely to ask and answer the next question … Why do you feel this way? And the next … What will you do about it?

These are important questions for me to ask and answer.

I know the health data my watch provides is helpful, and even necessary as I monitor a heart condition. And for the record, I’ll try to spend more time outside in daylight today than I did yesterday.

But my watch provides no measure for hope.

That’s one data point I’d like to keep track of on my own.

chasing light

~ onehopefulyear ~ 4 Comments

This time of year, I follow light around the house like a puppy after its best friend. I am sun hungry, and I measure rays stretched across hardwood floors and count minutes of daylight like coins in a bank.

It’s easy to feel miserly, hoarding each minute of light, a bit bitter at the hours of darkness.

Much better to feel grateful and celebratory for the minutes I have. To delight in howsoever I choose to spend them.

I sit on the porch, cupping my tea, on watch as the sun recedes from view. Wrapped in a blanket against the increasing chill, I’m basking, sun on my face. Today’s last rays a deposit I took the time to make.

The light of faith and hope and prayer notwithinstanding, It is up to me, I think, to find my own light. Make my own light. Be my own light.

Live the light.

what’s good for me

~ onehopefulyear ~ 2 Comments

Focus on what’s right in front of me – no looking ahead or what-ifs, ands or buts.

Replace complaining with gratituding.

Keep moving. No lull, no lolling about, no lamenting.

Ponder can-dos over can’t dos. Wishes and want-tos will have their moment.

Relax my shoulders. Unfurrow my brow.

Turn my face to the sun, but remember even rain waters something within me.

Enjoy the exquisite fullness of this one moment.

Wonder about wonder.

Listen for the morning chorus of birds.

It’s quite possible, after all, each bird whistles a song of hope . . .

today’s hope