What to Expect When You're Expecting

My "Bucket Bucket"

--Expecting to leave a job, that is.

As of today, Friday May 4th, I have 40 days left at my job. Yes, I've started a countdown, but not in a I-can't-wait-to-get-out-of-here kind of way. Like Ann Voskamp's counting of gifts, I want to count my remaining days as an exercise in giving thanks. In choosing, deciding to see the gifts that await me. To open my palms to receive the graces. To open my eyes to capture joy.

As I anticipate my last 40 days at Plant With Purpose, I am expecting joy.

I was wary to blog about this because I've blocked enough wedding countdown updates on my own Facebook newsfeed to know that most people don't really want to read about my incremental journey toward freelancing bliss. However, I have a hunch that most people who read this blog would be interested to hear how choosing to see these days as opportunities for adventures instead of the final hours to trudge through is altering my attitude, multiplying my joy, and allowing me to be present in the midst of transition. Allowing me to see God where I am, enabling me to see God in where I've been, and preparing me to see God where I am going.

No, we didn't actually bring a keg back to the office.

To do this I've created a work Bucket List--a compilation of challenges and adventures I want to complete by my final day. My coworkers and I have jotted down suggestions on neon sticky notes and placed them in my newly coined "Bucket bucket" that sits on my desk.  At the end of every workday, I will pull out a challenge for the following day.

Thus far I've completed two challenges. On Wednesday, two of my coworkers and I trekked to the Karl Strauss brewery across the railroad tracks from our office--a lunchtime adventure we've been talking about for some months, but had never fulfilled. It turns out the brewery doesn't have a tasting room, but we had a delightful dilly-dally nonetheless. We stretched our legs, traversed the wildflowers, and got to know our office neighborhood a little better. We ended up back at our business park deli to enjoy Coke Zeros, baklava, and a chummy time with our Executive Director.

Yesterday my challenge was to go a day without making any cynical comments.

It was a quiet day.

Drinking Coke Zero instead of a Karl Stauss-- better for our waistlines and our productivity.

Today's challenge is to brainstorm the content for our quarterly newsletter. Now this may not sound like fun to most, but I absolutely LOVE coming up with creative content, and it's my last chance to impose my tree-mendous puns on our newsletter readers while I'm still the official Editor-In-Chief. Let the punning begin!

For the next 40 days I'll be sharing a bit about my bucket list at the end of each blog post--this way, if you so choose, you can ignore it and stick to the regularly scheduled bloggy ramblings.

I expect the next 40 days will fly by entirely too fast, will be filled with both sadness at leaving and impatience at staying, yet most of all, I am choosing to expect joy.

Unthanksgiving

My New Year's reading has entailed one of the best books I've ever read: One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. She writes about choosing, learning, deciding to see the gifts in our lives. To give thanks. To name our thanks. To name our gifts and reclaim our lives.

The book started with a map of her own tragedy. Of pooling tears and shut in grief and tamped down faith. I liked it then. I liked the acknowledgement of the pain of life; eyes that see "a world pocked with pain."

And then she shifts direction, subtly, like a shadow passing over, from grief to life, from ingratitude to grace. To see the world through different eyes. Eyes that see through the "losses that puncture our world" to God.

A dare to see a world where "that which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To him. To the God we endlessly crave."

I wanted to go with her. To see with her.

I have no problem believing in the power of words, of our thoughts, to transform our lives. I have no problem believing that there are immeasurable gifts of grace and delight sitting below our noses, below my computer to the sparkling gold-gilded placemats that dazzle the room--a literal and metaphorical gift to my roommate that now garnish our table.

But right now, drowning in year-end regrets and plowing through a quarter-life crisis, I don't want to be grateful.

I want to be justified in my discontent. I want to mourn what I've lost. The unmet expectations. The disappointment. The disillusionment. That I'm 25 and haven't published a best seller or met the man of my dreams.

Okay, those may seem too cliche or far-fetched to warrant empathy. But the disappointment is real. The daily defeat of not being who I thought I would be. The sum of a million unmet expectations, moments when I could have chosen to learn and grow and live fully, when instead I sulked and balked and grew more deeply discontent.

This is and isn't what I want.

I know I need gratitude. I know it is the only way to truly live. I know it is The Way.

In the book, Ann starts an audacious list of 1,000 gifts in her life.

I'm starting one too. Right now I'm merely going through the motions. But I pray my pen and my prayers and my lists will reveal the places pocked with pain as gifts, as "seeing-through-to-God-places." That I would end the attitude of unthanksgiving. That I would learn to live.

1. Honest words typed across a blank screen...

T.S. Tuesday: Consequently I rejoice

From Ash Wednesday:

“Consequently I rejoice, having constructed something upon which to rejoice.”

This line prickles the hair on my Absolute loving neck. Either something is intrinsically praiseworthy or it isn’t. How can you make it up?

On the other hand, so much of my life and my story has been shaped by my choices to move forward, to choose to hope, to choose to rejoice. To participate in actions and beliefs and moments that lead me to rejoice.

I’ve heard love is a verb, love is an action, love is an orientation. I believe Love is a choice.

The power comes not in the pat answers, clichés, or absolutes, but in the choice to seek, to hope, to live.

I will rejoice because I can rejoice. I will hope because I can hope. I will love because I can love. And consequently I rejoice.