On Advent and Gratitweets

I'm grateful for enough food, even though I'm still hungry all the time.

I'm grateful for a soft bed, even though I spend all my days tired despite of it.

I'm grateful I was born into and amazing family. I really miss them all. 

On December 18th (a rather random date due to the sponteneity of the idea), my favorite actress suggested on Twitter we'd all tweet her one thing we are grateful for, every day until December 31st. I figured that would be a nice end of year tradition. Giving thanks under all circumstances and all that. We're halfway through now, and I'm running out of ideas. Running out of ideas as in today I was grateful for tea. Turns out I suck at being grateful at the moment. I've spend most of the past four weeks in bed and I'm no longer very succesful at the whole pious suffering thing. I'm glass half empty. Or to be quite hounest, I can only make out about half an inch of fluids in there. I sat up in bed yesterday evening deciding that's pathetic and tried real hard to come up with the numerous blessings I have in my life. I then spent 30 minutes watching all of them being followed by a whiny 'even though...' of some sorts. 

I'm grateful for friends that haven't forgotten about me after all these years, and sad for the ones I've lost contact with cos I can't find energy for them.

I'm grateful for the internet and detest the amount of time I spend on it. Or maybe I'm just gonna be grateful for the internet for a bit.

I'm grateful to live in a country with a well functioning healthcare system, even if the best diagnosis they've managed to come up with in over 5 years is still 'you're fine'.

I'm grateful for my parents being in good enough health to take care of me, even though it scares me sometimes where I'll end up when they will no longer be able to do so.

I look up at the prayernote for the 6 year old girl batteling brain cancer above my bed and tell myself to be grateful I'm not dying - a sarcastic 'I can just keep feeling miserable till I'm 78' slips out and I bite my lip. I try again to be grateful for another birthday celebrated, another New Year hailed and I'm grateful for hers. But I can't help remembering 2010 as the year I cancelled both my birthday and Christmas, and spent the two New Year's Eves at home alone. 

I am grateful for the upright way the girl's mum blogs about their struggles and their faith and how they clash all the time. There's a real one. Even if I wish she didn't have to.

I'm grateful that I have a roof over my head and walls to keep it up there, even if I'd love to spend some more time outside of it. 

I'm grateful I still like the taste of scrambled eggs after 4 years of eating them daily cos they're on the short (very short) list of fuel my tummy will except. I hesitate to write it down or even think it though, cos instead of grateful I start feeling very pathetic. 

I'm grateful for enough money to give away from and I yearn to give myself. 

I remember Joni Eareckson, a girl paralised from her neck down since she was eighteen. She writes about our  tendency to only look at people better off than us, allowing ourselves to wallow in selfpity while we only need to look the other way to turn the scales. I try to look there for a bit. I am glad I'm not worse off, but to call it gratitude would be a bit of a stretch. You don't just feel pain when you made it to the top of the list. 

I'm grateful for pretty snow and am dying to play in it. 

I'm grateful for Christmas lights even though I wish I'd had more than 3 afternoons of high enough energy levels to enjoy them with a candle and a Christmas cd.

I'm grateful for new neighbors with kids but really wish they'd stop sanding now. 

I'm grateful reading other people's gratitweets cos mine annoy me to no end. 

I blame Advent. 

I love the four weeks leading up to Christmas. I'm a candle burner, a crib builder, a calendar opener. And a Christmas meditator. My head didn't pull off much meditating this year (did I mention I've spent the past four weeks in bed?) but the upside of that is your mind only hangs on to those things that really spoke to you and mulls over them during long boring bed hours. To me this year, it was a sentence from the back flap of the booklet: 

Advent is an exercise in longing. 

It’s hard to be grateful while letting in the full blow of what you ache for.

I took me a few years to get there, but when I finally accepted I had little hopes of regaining the life I used to live anytime soon, I learned quite quickly that you can't wake up every day wishing you were in college. It's also a bad idea to keep track of all the activities you're missing out on, and if you can't escape them cos, well, your friends are still living your life, you endure them till it stops hurting. Till summer holidays and snow are the only situations in which you still spontaneously feel like hiking, cos they don’t happen often enough to get used to their new reality. You take what you have, and instead of constantly reaching for a place you can't get to, you make yourself at home in a new one. You live a small life instead of the former big one, but at least you're living – you’re not stuck in an ongoing attempt at it that keeps failing. You kill the longing cos it's just easier that way. 

Until this month. Now I shamelessly long to get dressed in the morning and shower every day. Because my book said so. I long to step out my front door and then go somewhere. Somewhere that's not a doctor’s office, and without being taken there by someone else. I long to take a 2 hour hike in the snow, and to go ice-skating in the woods. I long to join the Christmas gourmet. While we're on the topic of food: I also long for pizzas and brownies and oven potatoes with Italian herbs and coffee with rum and Chinese take-out. I long to shop for old people when the roads ice up, and to not be the lonely person prayer object on the Christmas calendar.  I long to make up for 5 years of cancelled tea parties and dinner dates. I long to go to colllege and to live on my own. I would also like to have a cat. 

Okay, maybe this isn't the kind of longing for kingdom come my book was talking about. But then maybe you never long for kingdom come when you've succesfully banned out all need for it.    

So maybe this is a first step. Maybe, a few weeks from now, I'll be grateful again for hope and dreams. I may have given up on trying to make life meaningful and instead be waiting for meaning to be given. I may have gotten to the second half of my book's remark: in the expectance that God will fulfill that longing: He comes close. A few weeks from here I may be longing for something always within my reach, even if I still miss friends and brownies. In fact it might be the very thing that gives a brownie including life it's meaning. I may believe again all things work together for good and that it's still the case when I can't see it. A few weeks from now I may be grateful for the Baby. 

Try me again mid January. I'm behind a bit, that’s all. I spent the past 4 weeks in bed.