Just a Good Old Day

This has been one of those occasional days that leaves me with a lovely, peaceful feeling, as if there's a lot right. Not that anything huge happened. Things just went well enough to create a glow, a belief with a Mona Lisa smile that life is good just the way it is. Here's my humble rosary of a good, good day when we and everything in our life seemed in place.

• Work was untroubled and productive.
  
• The weather was sunny and bright.
  
• I actually liked my clothes today (my favorite funky clogs, jeans that fit, black turtleneck, houndstooth jacket, berry pink scarf).
  
• We reviewed the first draft of our house plans over lunch.
  
• I was asked if I would be interested in another bookkeeping gig in the next few months. Kind of a job...inquiry, if you will.
• I was also approached about a catering gig in June.
  
• On the way home, My Beloved and I checked out all the old farmhouses on our route and detoured for more, seeking to refine our ideas of how our dream home should look.
  
• The parents-in-law liked the ideas we hatched for our house.
  
• We were all in the kitchen together frying up burgers made from our own good beef and then laughing around the dinner table--mother-in-law included.
  
• MiL's recovery from knee replacement surgery is accelerating enough that she is more her lively self in spirit.
• Now we have two hours of leisure tucked away in the study. Beloved is drawing. I'm recording the bliss while music plays.
  

With the usual irony I note that this lovely list comes on the heels of a week of stress and worry in which we watched the Queen Bee of this house (the mother-in-law, not me) suffer and struggle. The strain on everyone caught up with us by the weekend in the form of frustrations and tension. Everything seemed so blocked up and prickly and dragging, in bodies and souls alike, that I laid awake until midnight last night with an unhappy belly and a squawking mind. And then, just like that, the air cleared and harmony was restored.

Life is full of these surprises and always seeks balance. There's no way to predict when the good stuff will arrive like an unordered package and no way to know when the bad things will wallop you blindside. Admonish yourself that after an ecstatic peak, there will be a valley. But also rest assured when frustrations and irritations are building up tectonic force in your psyche, that a day of joyful release is coming. Let faith sustain you through the bad times and savoring extend the good times as they chase each other through your life. There is always both blessing and burden.

Like right now. I have a good day glow and a growing headache, yin and yang here and now embodied. Tonight I gracefully accept the opposing forces and allow them the passage they will take anyway. I am able to cooperate with life's weather in this moment. It's easier on the good days.

My rosary list from this day will be fingered again at bedtime in our shared nightly gratitude ritual. But even when I'm not feeling cooperative, I make a list of things to be grateful for anyway, just as I do on the good days. Because they all really are in some way or other. I know it and honor it even when I can't feel it. Tonight I get both.