Category: Gratitude

Gratitude

Away From Elsewhere

Carrie Sue Barnes

I sit at my desk wearing a fleece jacket zipped to my neck and a thick afghan blanket over my legs. The culprit is the A/C vent in the ceiling over my neighbor’s cubicle. He’s comfortable, by the way, as the vent doesn’t force the air straight down but rather outward in each direction. My hands, starting to tan from time in the occasional sunshine we have been treated to lately, are icy cold on the keyboard.

No matter how I feel about my job overall, this is reason enough to wish I was elsewhere. 
Elsewhere. 
I keep planning little escapes in my head. Places to visit, adventures to take. They’re all elsewhere. I want to put my baby girl in a carrier on my chest and hike the trails I used to enjoy. I want to take a day away with my husband to revisit the waterfalls a few counties north of here. There was a day like that from one of our dating summers and it stands out in my memory as particularly splendid. I’d like to take my little boy on an adventure, maybe explore a farm full of animals or go camping for a night, just the two of us. The idea thrills me to take them all, plus my stepson, on a drive to Holy Hill for a day of beauty and fun and peace.
Or I could write. Elsewhere, I could write. Elsewhere, I could sit for hours with my manuscript and pens, marking up the pages with changes and improvements. I could move closer and closer to being ready to seek a publisher. 
I want, I want, I want. I could, I could, I could. There is no contentment in letting my mind be occupied in this way. These aren’t bad things to be desiring. Some of them might come to fruition in the near future with some good planning. Focusing on them at the expense of what is right in front of me though, is unacceptable. Instead, contentment might be exactly what I ought to seek right now. 
In our everyday language, contentment has taken a bad rap. We use the word too often to refer to “settling” or “resigning.” Settling for less than what you desire or seek; Resigning yourself to circumstances you wish were different. We talk of someone being content with the hand they were dealt, content in their comfort zone, or content to put up with this or that. Maybe we are using the word incorrectly.
Contentment – definition: the state of being contented; satisfaction; ease of mind
Content – definition: satisfied with what one is or has; not wanting more or anything else
Ease of mind. Satisfied. Sounds deliciously wonderful to my restless heart.
I do believe I have feared contentment at times. If I am content, will I stop dreaming? Will I stop striving for greater things or improving myself? Will I no longer seek new experiences?
The answer to those questions might be yes, but it’s completely up to me. Instead, contentment can be exactly what’s needed to be ready for the next dream, the next experience, the next change. Contented peace of mind will allow me to be my best self, present and engaged instead of anxiously longing for the elusive elsewhere. Contentment will open my eyes to the goodness of the moments here and now, to the blessings I take for granted. Contentment will soften my heart to understand why my path has taken me to this place with these people instead of that place with those people. Contentment contains patience, cheerfulness, calm, and joy. 
Contentment is starting to sound a whole lot better than Elsewhere.
Faith, Gratitude

Home Is a Moving Object

Carrie Sue Barnes

Time has an insatiable appetite, hording each present moment into its collection known as the past. Except even its ownership of all those moments doesn’t satisfy. No, time must be sure we can’t recollect what was ours. So it chips away at things, induces change, until the circumstances that made our memories are hardly recognizable. This is the conclusion I came to as I drove away from my hometown a few weeks ago. The building blocks of that structure, the “home” of that place, are gradually coming apart. Not crumbling or breaking, nothing so tragic as that. It’s all the ordinary process of time passing, that’s all. Blocks are removed, reshaped, separated from the rest. We all experience it. People move, people die, businesses close, buildings are remodeled, roads are rerouted. Essentially, time happens. What can we do about it?

Maybe the better question is what should we do about it? Because we can cling to the past. We can reconnect with as many old friends and acquaintances as we can find. We can dwell on what we no longer have. We can focus on memories until we are certain all was better then than now. But should we?

As I drove the two hours back to my present home after a weekend at my former home, my babies sleeping in their car seats and the radio giving a soundtrack to my thoughts, I let myself ponder all this. My conclusion: home is a traveling vehicle. It carries us, holds and contains us, and most of all, it moves with us. The old adage of “home is where the heart is” may be one of the most well known cliches of all time but that doesn’t make it false.

We moved to our current home 5 1/2 months ago. I know exactly how long we’ve been here because it is the same as my little daughter’s age, minus a week. We moved in a state of upheaval. Baby Girl spent one single night in our home in Menasha. We returned from the hospital and rested in a rocking chair while every other piece of furniture, article of clothing, and cooking utensil was packed up and hauled out. Then my husband began his new job, sleeping at the worst motel in our new town, and the kids and I had a limbo week at my parents’ house while we waited for our place to be move-in ready. We unloaded all those boxes in Manitowoc and we were home. In the weeks and months that followed I have answered the “does it feel like home yet?” question countless times. I realize now that I’ve been answering incorrectly. I usually talked about what still needs to be done to settle in. I described where we were at in the stages of unpacking and decorating. I spoke of feeling like a stranger at our new church or how I don’t have friends yet, stopping short of admitting just how lonely I am. I mentioned my gradual familiarity of the city’s layout and what stores or restaurants or parks we’ve tried out. None of that answers the question though.

If I answered with clarity I’d say simply, “Yes.” Yes, it feels like home. Just as our duplex in Menasha felt like home, or our apartment in Appleton after the wedding, or the apartment and then house I shared with my sister and friend in the years before being married, it feels like home. Because it is where I live. Not where I used to live or wish I lived or where my extended family or various friends live, but where I live now. It is where my life is happening. Home is a moving object. If I understand what makes a place or situation “home” then I can be sure to never leave it behind or have it taken from me. It will move and change with me, surround me at all times. It will be the scene of my life being lived, and that alone will give it the privilege of being called home.

Gratitude, Scripture

In Everything, Give Thanks

Carrie Sue Barnes

Early evening sunbeams pouring through the clouds, landing on the lush green tree tops and full corn fields. It’s a scene I’ve seen a thousand times through the car window, a photo I’ve taken at least a dozen times. Why does it still take my breath away? Why does it not yet seem “generic,” as one person called it? I can only call it grace. I can only attribute it to the Lord forming my eyes and heart over time to see the uniqueness of that particular view. He knew before I was formed that I would be a person benefitted by appreciating such scenes. He knew I would need to be built up by glimpses of beauty on ordinary days.

Last week I began reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and this week I became a copycat. Immediately moved by the author’s dawning realization of the value of giving thanks, day in and day out, I chose to take the dare she laid out on the pages. I am writing down in a small notebook the moments that produce thanksgiving. What I quickly understood is that I tend to reserve my offerings of thanks to the times when I come to pray – on the occasional mornings when I take a few minutes to pray and read Scripture, in the evenings as I lay in bed at the close of another day, and especially at Mass, my knees on the kneeler, my forehead resting on my folded fingers. The challenge I am taking up is to give thanks all day long… to maintain a riveted awareness of all there is to be thankful for in my life.

For the first time ever I feel like maybe what St. Paul describes could actually be possible: “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything <sup class="crossreference" value="(AL)”> give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18),” I’ve been able to explain all I want what those verses mean but I can’t claim to have had success at living them. Setting my standard at “pray daily,” I measure myself in a lesser manner. But as St. Francis de Sales pointed out, “You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves.” And so, we learn to pray without ceasing by praying without ceasing. We learn to give thanks in everything by giving thanks in everything.

If God allows me to see/hear/touch/encounter something beautiful, something meaningful, something joy-giving, something that makes me smile or laugh or sigh happily, then He has given me reason to give thanks. If in an experience of difficulty or negativity, He keeps my perspective in check, or causes me to exercise compassion, understanding, or patience, then He has given me reason to give thanks. Perhaps eventually I’ll be able to see that God never isn’t allowing those things to happen, only I didn’t always recognize or accept them.

Ribbons on gifts
Dark red raspberries bobbing in a carafe of cotton candy pink lemonade
The softness of warm kisses
Cold orange juice
Waves from the neighbors as I leave for work
The scratch of pen on paper
Baby pictures on coworkers’ desks
Morning thunder
Patience in traffic

Thankfulness gives rise to joy. Do we not all crave a greater well of joy in our lives?

Friendship, Gratitude

Shoulders

Carrie Sue Barnes

“Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

Oh what would I do without friends? Shoulders to hug, shoulders to lean on, shoulders to laugh on, shoulders to cry on. I am feeling utterly grateful for them today. There is an aspect of loneliness to the situation I’m dealing with right now that could overwhelm me if I allow it. It could obscure the reality that I am not alone, that I am well loved.

Friends are God’s greeting cards; His notes of well-wishes and encouragement, intended to give you a smile, a sigh of relief and a bit of confidence that all will come right.

Gratitude, Writing

Living It Up

Carrie Sue Barnes

Oh, where to begin. This whole vacation thing is really treating me well. Better than I even could have expected. At the moment, I am sitting in the morning sunshine in the kitchen of a chalet in Breckenridge, CO. The boys have just left for a day of skiing, the mom is still sleeping and I have been proofing the rough draft of my chapter-by-chapter summary for a publisher submission. Yesterday I finished that rough draft. The summary is something I’ve picked away at for the last five months or more. It’s been pathetically slow-going. But yesterday, I put in at least four hours, maybe more, and finished the rough draft. Now that is what I’m talking about! That is why I was so eager to take this vacation! I feel like myself again. A writer.

I did take a break in the middle of the afternoon yesterday and wandered around downtown Breckenridge. My first experience of the Rocky Mountains took my breath away. I felt like a child, so excited by everything I saw. Each corner I turned meant another picture to take because it was a fresh angle on the views. The peaks surrounding us are topped with pristine snow, glinting in the sunshine and shrinking the sky. The sky is always the biggest part of the landscape where I come from, but not here. It is the diminutive background to the mountains here.

Being the only “morning person” in the house, it’s easy to include silence and prayer first thing upon getting out of bed. Today I cooked breakfast for the rest of them and it was plenty rewarding to see the happiness of three men stumbling down the stairs to follow the smell of food before they’re even fully awake. I keep thinking of how God didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to make it possible for me to go on this vacation. He didn’t have to give us a week of sunshine. He didn’t even have to design the landscape to fill us with awe. But He did because He loves so well.

Catholicism, Friendship, Gratitude

Side by Side

Carrie Sue Barnes

If you’re hoping for a detailed summary of the March for Life excursion, please don’t be too disappointed. Certainly, there are plenty of details I could share and anecdotes I could tell, but those are not what is on my mind. I do promise to post some pictures from the journey and event, just not in this particular post.

What is filling my head and heart for the time being is grateful amazement. The goodness of God, His generous heart, continues to catch me off guard. This trip to the March for Life reunited me with some traveling companions of my youth. The experience of partnering with them once more for a faith-based event brought about an eyes-wide-open perception of God’s goodness toward me. My teenage years were filled with normal, average teenage experiences for the most part, but they were interwoven with the out of the ordinary as well. The out of the ordinary came in the form of numerous travels, retreats, conferences and gatherings with my fellow Catholic teenagers from the Diocese of Marquette, MI. While I’ve always known that these contributed a great deal to my formation, I have still managed to underestimate their effects.

For one reason or another, it hit me this past week how much I owe to the Lord for placing me amongst the people and providing for me the experiences of my youth. I grew up with my very own “cloud of witnesses” running with me on every side. What courage was gained from the relationships forged by faith! What might have been different if that faith hadn’t been rooted, nurtured and solidified at such a young age! In the last week, as I was plopped into a scene so closely resembling my past, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to the beauty of my friends.

Beauty…. The joy it effected thankfully had an outlet in the laughter and prayer we were continuously engaged in for the last five days. I ought to give those friends credit for that aspect of my life, too. Learning to laugh, to simply tumble about in humor and enjoyment of each other, came through this group of friends. Then to have these friendships not be merely a memory but a blessing that continues to braid itself into my life with all the other things I am caught up in as an adult, for that I am grateful, to say the least.

“My cup runneth over…” I kept thinking of the Kingdom of God parables that liken the kingdom to a buried treasure or a perfect pearl. Worth everything, priceless, abundant, beautiful; the kingdom of God includes the people in it.

Catholicism, Faith, Gratitude

Old Friends

Carrie Sue Barnes

In preparation for a talk I’ll be giving in December, I am revisiting some dear old friends-in-print: Lumen Gentium, Gaudium et Spes, the Didache, Loving the Church by Cardinal Shonborn. It all has me remembering a lot of things. Why I got into Theology; why I loved every day that I was able to study it at Franciscan U; why I thrill with elation in the moment of catechesis… I can hear Sr. M. Johanna’s voice as she lectures on christocentricity, and Fr. Pattee’s insightful explanation of each of the seven Sacraments. I remember the excitement of (the attempt at) absorbing the depth of Dr. Hahn’s lectures, and the giddiness of grasping, after considerable effort, an eternal truth that was new to my mind and heart. Considering how frustrated, impatient and drained I get from the task, the love I have for learning the mysteries of the faith must be what keeps me teaching it. I complain because I get worn out; I weaken because I neglect prayer; I am discouraged because my calling to adult catechesis doesn’t translate into a full time gig in the Church. None of this stands much of a chance though in the face of becoming a theology student once again, be it in my bedroom with a book in my hands or at a lecture or Bible study. On such occasions, I am renewed in both the joy I am gifted with when I study the faith and in the commitment previously made to be a catechist in whatever ways God allows.

I mean, when I read, “There are two ways, one of life and one of death; but a great difference between the two ways,” and realize I have the opportunity to not only learn but also share the very faith that the Apostles learned firsthand from Jesus and taught to the first generation of Christians, my heart can’t help but cry out in gratitude to the Lord.