presence – Surprised By Joy

“Sometimes it’s okay if the only thing you remembered to do today was breathe.” – unknown

There’s a difference between being tired and exhausted, isn’t there? If I wasn’t so exhausted, I’m sure I could tease it out. Somehow an avalanche of work obligations, the kids school and social commitments, and holiday preparation all landed at once in my life. I’ve been tackling as much as I can every day, sleeping hard every night, and then getting up to try to shovel out again.

Somewhere in there I’ve noticed three things that become a lot harder when I’m exhausted: being present, generating humor, and keeping the faith. As someone who typically has a lot of energy, or at least consumes enough sugar to fake it, I was surprised that those depend on having some gas in the tank. [case in point, I think I could have made that sugar joke a lot funnier if I wasn’t so tired!]

As usual, my kids save me. Usually because they provide so much distraction that I can’t take getting stuff done too seriously.

But in this specific case, because I had to take them to a delightful indoor play place for a birthday party this weekend. Painted all over the walls were some really good quotes that pointed out the benefits of play:

“Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.” – Robert Fulghum

“It’s a happy talent to know how to play” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity of humor.” Stuart Brown

I can’t be the only one exhausted at this time of year so I thought I’d share these with you. Also, I think I write about this every year about this time so I’m hoping that writing about these will help future me skip the stress and remember to play. [Again, I think that had some potential to be funnier.]

Here’s to play – or at least cookies and milk and then a nap!

You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wynneleon/ and Instagram @wynneleon

I host the How to Share podcast, a podcast celebrates the art of teaching, learning, giving, and growing.

I also co-host the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast with the amazing Vicki Atkinson.

“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott

One of the books I read in my morning meditation time is Listening to Your Life by author and pastor Frederick Buechner. My mom and I were talking about it a little while back. She mentioned that some find his writing to not be doctrinal enough. Funny because I read him and find at times that I think he’s too doctrinal.

When I was trying to understand how my view of faith differed from that of my dad (and mom) as I was writing my book Finding My Father’s Faith, I read Dr. M. Scott Peck’s book Further Along the Road Less Traveled. In it he describes four stages of faith.

The first stage, chaotic/antisocial, he reserves for people with anti-social tendencies; his second stage is formal/institutional in which faith is governed by an outside body, typically the church.

Dr. Peck calls stage three people “skeptic/individual.” Often stage three people are children of stage two people who have been raised with the values of the church but fall away from the formality and governance of it.

He then describes these stage-three people as usually scientific, truth-seeking people who often begin to see patterns in the big picture that tie them back to the beliefs of their parents and when they do, they transition to stage four, mystical/communal, “people who have seen a kind of cohesion beneath the surface of things.”

Those stages rang true to me and I found comfort in the classification of it all. Regardless of the theory behind it, I suspect that whatever our ideologies are, it’s a narrow band trying to find others who are align exactly or even fairly closely.

But I think we transcend that when we tell our stories. For me, authentic storytelling skips the doctrinal distinctions in the head and goes right to the heart. Here’s one that recently struck me, Buechner tells the story of a friend showing up when Buechner’s daughter was sick. He’d come from 800 miles away without any advance notice and then spent a couple of nights hanging out.

Buechner said they didn’t do anything particularly religious – went for walks, smoked some pipes, took a drive. “I believe that for a little time we both of us touched the hem of Christ’s garment, were both of us, for a little time anyway, healed.”

For me, it hits me right in what I believe is sacred: showing up, being present, holding space for one another to tell our stories.

Tag: presence

Holiday PSA: Remember to Play

Showing Up and Telling Stories