The One Where I Say "Break The Mold!"

Let me begin with I'm a bad blogger.  I totally need a reminder to blog or something. I dunno, I tend to be a "subject matter" blogger.  I blog when I have something to say.

Today is one such day.

It's Fall Y'all in Texas.  Well it is for today anyway.  I should probably post pix of this... I won't because I need to dust.... but my house décor is "fall" related.  Oranges, purples, deep red hues.  Because I love Fall.  I was born in September and I think some of the best things  happen in September! 

Seasons change

Baseballs annual "Hunt for Red October" (is anyone else heartbroken over the way the A's have fallen apart, or how my Texas Rangers are in last place, when did we become "The Cubs" of baseball?)

Football season begins (Go Packers, Giants, Bears and Broncos - just cuz I'm in Texas doesn't mean I love the Cowboys...that's a blog for another day)

Oh and Seasons change.

I like the crispness of the air the way it ushers in a change in our focus.  Summer is over and we make this turn.... almost like a turn home after a long trip.  For me it's familiar, it's a settling in, a cozying up with a good book and a cool day kind of mentality.  It's not hurried. 

Noticing the décor in my kitchen today, as if I'd never seen it, I have these vines of leaves, on the tops of my cabinets, ya know where you put stuff, like greenery, plastic plants, decorative stuff that only gets dusted once a year. 

Anyway, the "greenery" at my house isn't so green, it's fall colors, red and orange and purple and hues that made me think of this place we're in as people.

These leaves are changing, alive and not dead, they haven't fallen to the ground, they are clinging to their life source.  They are fiery and bold and in your face, yet delicate and in process. 

Sometimes this happens in our own back yard, and other times we travel to see the beauty of the process.  There's an entire business of seeing this process and the viewers call it beautiful, breathtaking, phenomenal, vibrant, and beyond description.

Yet when that happens in life, when we're in process, we don't describe it much like that, do we?   We don't book vacations, charge the camera, pack a lunch, post to Instagram.  We don't marvel at it as though something beautiful happening before our very eyes.  Not in our self.  Not in others.

Stop and smell the roses they say!  I say Break The Mold!  Stop and watch the process of Fall, the delicate balance of becoming, the fragility of life, the boldness of clinging.  Notice it in yourself.  Be okay to proceed, become, cling.  Celebrate it in others.  Give them permission to proceed, become and the boldness to cling when needed.

Maybe to come on Instagram will be boring pictures of my stubborn Oak Tree, the one that is the last to lose it's leaves, still clinging to the old as buds of new life push them off and into the wind. 

Perhaps I'll have something more to say about it as we go into a new season.  :)  About the tree and maybe about me.

The One Where I {link up) for Five Minute Friday - Grateful

If you've heard me say it once  you've heard me say it forty times: #1000gifts.

Take the joy dare. 

Slow down to see the miracles. Because there's a little something special in every day.

I've written my three things sporadically over the past eight months, started on my birthday.  At first I wrote them faithfully, but then I didn't do it as often.  But I do it.  Every month is new I start up again.  :)

Here is a spattering of my #1000gifts

1. Life
2. Birthdays
3. Health
4. Pumpkin Lattes
5. Cake
6. Rain
7. End of Summer
8. Dishes
9. Laundry
10. Ezra 4

100. Fire
101. Burning Desire
102. Burned Dinner
103. Burning Bush
104. Sun
105. Muscles
106. Shared
107. Saved
108. Surrendered
109. Sweet Sweat
110. Leave It On The Pavement
I stopped counting in my journal and began on Instagram.  I really need to go back to the journal....

Three Things Hard:
Trust
Submission
Acceptance

Three Things Rising Up:
1. The sun with new mercy
2. The sun with new mercy
3. The sun with new mercy

Three gifts Stacked, Stashed, Stilled:
1. Dishes put away by the teenager
2. Chocolate
3. Quiet house in the morning... to go with my coffee

It's hard for me be to grateful, it really is.  Isn't that the jest of the garden.... of original sin..... ingratitude.  I'm ungrateful, for the smallest things... for the people around me who I love and adore (but they get on my nerves),  the fridge full of food (yet I can't find anything to eat), the music blasting on my stereo (and with Sirius XM, there's nothing good to listen to).

Todays Prompt Is: Three Gifts In The Dark

1. Sleep.  Must.Have.More! Yet grateful for good night's sleep!
2. RRC Track Workout.  I get up at 4AM to run in the dark on Tuesday.  I'm grateful for my running club that offers this kind of workout for my very low membership fee!
3. Stars.  You can't see stars unless it's dark.  There's beauty in that, both when you're looking and the stars and when it's dark in your life.  Look to the Morning Star! 

I've got to get better:  In counting my blessings. (and I don't mean stuff)In getting to 1000 gifts.  In slowing down to see the miracle.  So many things can go wrong in the course of a day, a week, a month... a life....  So many things that really in the scheme of things don't really matter.  What I was upset about last month, who can remember?  What about last year at this time?  Who knows? 

It's time to slow down to see the miracle, choose joy, pass joy onto others, teach our children to live with gratitude, not entitlement.  It starts with us.  It starts with me, the ungrateful.