54/1000

I feel fabulous!
And ... I am grateful for that.
Everyday I meet or at least see women who don't ... feel fabulous ... Maybe they did when they were younger, but don't now, and probably have long forgotten the days when they did. The thing about feeling really good about things when you are young, is ... you have no perspective from which to enjoy your good fortune. I'm not trying to be all miss rose colored glasses here ... just saying most people have it better then they are able to realise. Seems like we tend to look for what's wrong (so we can fix it) rather then savouring all that is so right. I notice this more in women ... maybe because men seem to expect to find purpose/gratification in their careers and most of the women I actually come in contact with do not work outside their homes, and don't think of how they spend their days as very gratifying. It seems like when they do finish this big dream of tending the perfect family and the perfect home ... once they come to the realisation that everything isn't as perfect in their sphere as it seems to be in those orbiting near them, that they sorta implode ... sorta settle in to discontent with their ordinary lives. And fairly ordinary lives is what most of us have to work with. As I think of a hero ... an extraordinary person ... I guess I think of astronaut/pioneering pilots first. (Alright, and John Wayne.) A hero is an icon ... an image of awesome, beyond-human, proportions ... someone who does amazingly strong and impressive feats ... then they go home and maybe, hopefully, someone rubs the warmth back in to their frozen human feet. It's cold up there atop Mt. Olympus and even over Mt. St. Helens way. Now, im just rambling away from this specific thankful.
I was trying to build a place where I could feel fabulous. A place where I could actually do activities that I find impressive. I like to impress myself.
My husband very sweetly remarked recently that he really likes the way I fold towels (and everything else ... Momma did get through to me on a few domestic skills ... I fold well, and I can organise a closet or a drawer ... and maybe even a garage ... Ummm, honestly, I don't find it very impressive or gratifying!) Well, flying, and the actions which support flying well, was a perfect venue for my easy going, adaptive and yet somewhat stubbornly detail oriented self. Some stuff in flying is just flat out science ... fact. Some of the stuff is ... well, it's like magic ... artful. Okay, here I am getting distracted from this thankful again. Anyway ... I knew my full time role as a mom was winding down and I didn't want to keep the apron strings tied in a perfect little bow. I wanted to begin creating another role for myself. Flight instructing seemed to be perfect ... and maybe it still does. The effort spent on preparing to flight instruct distracted me from the fact that an important part of me was becoming wrapped up, stuck, in this sticky dull fog that seems to be pervasive among women of similar circumstance. It's like we start out super vibrant in our young adult life and then just get dull and all smudgy as we age. Those Oprah type makeovers can enliven the veneer, but this is a dull that seeps all the way in past the bones to the very soul ... and then back out through one's face during unguarded moments.
I don't feel that way.
Part of me ... that part of me that is the real me ... was getting lost in the fog and I wasn't paying attention to that ... I found some excellent flight training distractions to occupy myself with. Then ... I think it was in mid-March or so when I was very amazed to hear that part of me laughing. Yeah, seriously ... Serious Me laughing like I used to and I remembered vibrant. It's pretty cool. I wanted to just stay in the cloud that I had stumbled in to on my way out of the sticky dull fog ... this cloud felt more like a cocoon might ... like a warm bubble bath, or a ... well ... sorta like a flight in IMC, the world is out there, but you are suspended inside a space where everything important seems to be within arms reach, your focus becomes very near sighted for that little while.

Now, for the 54/1000 that I am specifically thanking God for ... I am thankful that I feel fabulous in general. I am thankful that I hear myself laughing often ... even sometimes when it might be inappropriate to do so! I feel happy ... not just happy here or there, but happy everywhere ... pervasively so. I am so thankful for this time to remember and celebrate feeling like me. I'm thankful to be totally alive ... it makes me feel able to love.

Yesterday I read these lines in Elie Wiesel's writing (Dawn) ... ... and she began to speak to me of love. She spoke easily and well. Love is this and love is that; man is born to love; he is only alive when he is in the presence of a woman he loves or should love. I told her I knew nothing of love, that I didn't know it existed or had a right to exist.

Those words stopped me. I wanted to think about those words. I'm thinking about love, kinda in general these days. There is a lot more to love then the love between a man and a woman, but that is a love we try to understand ... that love was intended as a gift from God I think. And then the parental type of love ... again expressed to be a blessing from God, and I experience it as so.
What exactly is love and what are we supposed to do about it ...

I Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

... You gotta feel alive to express genuine love in any of its' forms. I'm feeling alive and that is what this thankful is. I'm thankful for the process that resurrected or resuscitated that part of me that was getting left behind in the fog.