Day 14: Rejection

What rejection are you grateful for?

This question prompt made me think of the college application process.  First things first, I'm glad those days are behind me!  I remember feeling a lot of pressure about it - not coming from my parents or my school, just internal - and I'm glad to have those days of writing essays and asking for teacher recommendations and waiting for fat or skinny envelopes in the rearview.  I applied to half a dozen schools for both college and law school, and received some rejections in both rounds.  The school I most clearly remember getting rejected from for both undergrad and law school was Cal Berkeley.  I didn't feel grateful on the days when I received the rejections, but I'm really glad that my school journeys went the way they did.  I am so grateful for my friends, experiences, and education from both schools, and for the husband and family that came from my days in law school.  I'm grateful for the chance to have lived on the East Coast for several years and see what the culture and cities are like in there.  I don't know for sure if I would've gone to Berkeley either time - the siren song of the Bay Area / West Coast was strong, so it certainly would've been under heavy consideration - but the point is that I'm grateful my life turned out the way it did, and one thing that helped steer it in that direction was this set of rejections.

Day 13: Season of the Year

 

What season of the year are you grateful for?

Summer is my favorite season, but today, I'm feeling particularly grateful for spring.  I'm grateful for the energy that comes with this time of year, as the light in days gets longer and the flowers bloom and show new life coming into the world.  I love some of the holidays of spring - St. Patrick's Day, March Madness, and Easter.  I love track and field season, and I love doing long runs in this season of not too hot, not too cold.  And I love that when spring ends, it vaults you into summer.

Day 12: 3 People I'm grateful for

 

Who are 3 people I'm grateful for?

I'm grateful for the grandmas in my children's life:  Nana Nancy (who is celebrating a birthday today!), Grandma Betty (who celebrates a birthday next week!), and Grandma Mare.  Each of these women are strong, smart, beautiful, and could have a whole post written about what amazing people they are, separate from their identity as a grandparent.  However, today I'm grateful for how much it helps ME and how much it benefits my kids to have three sets of actively involved grandparents.  

Each Grandma is differently situated as far as work and geography, but all of them find ways to maintain regular contact with the kids.  The Reno grandmas frequently babysit for the kids, see them at church, and regularly host family dinners or stop by with treats.  For the Nebraska grandma, our time comes in bursts of a week together every 3-6 months, with phone calls and letters and packages in-between times.  These grandparent times simultaneously give me a break and give the kids an extra set of adults who love them, who can teach them about different things and have different kinds of conversations, who can be different role models for them, who can be praying for them, and who can be a different set of eyes and ears for anything that might be going on with the kids (good or bad).  It expands the community of love and care.  

I'm grateful that each of these three grandmas are so generous with their time, with gifts, with their love, and with sharing their space.  And I'm grateful that each of these three are women who I WANT my kids to learn from, to spend time with, and to become like.  I am so abundantly blessed by each of them.

(The three grandpas are all terrific, too.  They add to this community of love, and bring lots of laughs, playfulness, geological facts, musical knowledge, sports trivia, and many other things.)

Day 11: Movie

What is a movie you're grateful for?

I'm grateful for the movie Bridesmaids, and particularly for a good memory I associate with this movie.  Last summer, around the time when the mask mandate had gone away and then come back and it was clear that there were going to be more waves of covid, and wildfire smoke was starting to creep in, and things were just feeling like a bummer, my friend Karen hosted this really fun backyard event.  She got an outdoor projector and tubs of popcorn and set up cozy seating, and we had an outdoor movie night.  We watched this hilarious movie together and between Melissa McCarthy and lip synching to "Hold On" and just being with friends, everything felt so happy.  I'm thankful for Karen and her Enneagram 7 energy that pulled this together; thankful for her friendship and for the friendship of the others that were there; and thankful for how good it feels to laugh together, and for this movie that brings the laughs from start to finish.  

Lesson 10: Grateful for In Childhood

 

What is something you're grateful for in your childhood?

I'm grateful that my dad played sports with us growing up.  My dad loves sports - playing them, watching them, coaching them, analyzing them.  Growing up, he would often take us outside and work on football passing patterns, or the footwork for boxing out when rebounding a basketball, or how to watch a baseball into the glove when you're catching a pop fly - and these were ways he showed love.  (I should  add that he also showed love through words and hugs - this was an additional way of showing love.)  I'm grateful to have had that quality time.  I was glad to have those fundamental skills as I participated in some of these sports growing up.  I'm grateful that, in a family where there were two boys and two girls in the kid set, he included all four of us in the sports lessons and didn't just wait for the boys to get old enough.  I'm grateful that he continued this sports enthusiasm by being at every game / meet / competition as we grew up, cheering us on.  I'm grateful that sports are something we can continue to enjoy as a family, and now my kids spend time with their grandpa learning how to swing a golf club, or playing football.

Lesson 9: Place I have traveled

Where is a place you're thankful to have traveled?

I'm thankful that I got the chance to travel to Ireland with my good friend / college roommate Judy. Both of us have some Irish heritage, and Judy has actually reconnected with some of her Irish family, so we were both eager to see it for ancestry reasons.  Judy and I lived in different cities at the time of the trip, so we decided to meet in Dublin.  This was pre smart phone days, and I was a little nervous about doing the journey on my own, but it turned out to be empowering to figure out things like getting through customs, navigating Irish public transportation, and managing to successfully meet up at the hostel.  We split our time between Dublin and the Irish countryside.  

In Dublin, it was fun to visit libraries that are older than the United States by centuries, to see buildings that looked like castles, to visit the Guinness Brewery, and to hang out in the pubs during some big rugby matches (both similar to and different than American football culture).  The real highlight, though, was seeing the beautiful Irish countryside.  It was pretty rainy and cold on many of our days, but we enjoyed a hot toddy in Galway, watching the sheep on the bright green hills from the train, and visiting Judy's family in County Cork.  

I'm so grateful for this to see a different part of the world, a different way of doing life, and a slice of my past.  And I'm grateful that I got to do this trip with Judy, who is an expert trip planner and a fun and easy person to spend days with.  

Day 8: Lesson in Life

 

What lesson in life are you grateful for?

I am grateful that my parents taught me to be a joiner.  We moved from the small town of Norfolk, NE to the bigger town of Lincoln, NE the summer before I started 9th grade.  I was leaving behind a beloved best friend and a community of familiar people, and starting in a new town at an age when most people already have their friend groups.  My parents immediately signed me up for a softball team, started us in a church youth group, and helped me sign up for tryouts for the school volleyball team.  Some of these activities (volleyball) took more than others (softball), but they were all extremely helpful towards the main goal:  I knew people when I walked in to school that first day.  Despite the fact that I was the new girl, and in a really dorky and awkward phase to boot, I had people saying hello in the halls and I had a group to sit with in the cafeteria on that first day.  A couple of these people eventually became my best friends.

This lesson is helpful to me, in particular, because I have a shy and introverted personality.  Getting together with people I don't know well, or in big groups, is always the harder choice.  On any given day, it's always easier to just stay home with my nose in a book or go for a solitary run than to get together with a group of unfamiliar people.  But we all need people, and we all need connection.  And sometimes life takes you to different communities, different schools, different jobs, or different churches where you don't immediately have any social connection.  Even though the process of going to gatherings with unfamiliar people sometimes feels difficult and awkward, and even though it doesn't always result in immediate deep friendships, I'm grateful that my parents taught me that as a general rule it's worth it to be a joiner.