Letting in the holy.

I like quotes. I always have; I began collecting them in my journals when I was very young. There is something about a perfect turn of phrase; a pithy set of words that sums up a concept I was previously unable to voice. Quotes remind me of ripe apples; not too much to digest. Sweet. Crisp. Lovely.

A quote that is bouncing around in my head today is this one that's attributed to Jim Valvano: "If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special." 

I guess I must be doing something special, because most days, I do all three of those things. Each one, at least a little bit.

Today, though? Today went beyond special. Today, everything felt kind of sacred. A little bit holy.

I didn't feel this way at first, not at all. I woke to recalcitrant 8-year-old insisting she COULD NOT and WOULD NOT get out of bed. She eventually did, but man, oh man, the agita. Then I tried to settle into working in my office, but my brain would simply not get started. Our toddler, who was in Daddy's care, but had gotten quite used to having unrestricted Mama time this weekend, mostly sat by the closed office door and whined, which was not enhancing my focus and productivity.

So if you had told me at 10:00am that today would turn out touched with holy, scented with sacred, I would have probably laughed in your face.

Then, on my Twitter feed there was this link to an Ann Voskamp post, today's, this one. I will not attempt to synopsize it here - with my clumsy prose, it would be like trying to get you to understand why a tulip is beautiful just by telling you the petals are red and it has a tall green stem. 

Now, I love Ann Voskamp, but I was feeling down, so at first I resisted reading it, even though the title hinted that it would nicely dovetail with the book I just finished reading last night, which closes by encouraging us to grasp onto joy by embracing our own mortality.

In fact, I was feeling so discouraged and cynical I raged a bit in my head: Yeah right! This is probably one of those "live like there's no tomorrow" posts.  If I lived every day as if it were my last, I would never do anything productive. No bills would get paid! No taxes done! There would be too many beauties to see, too many photos to take, too many words to write, too much sun to soak in, too much laughter with people I love. Seriously, I would do nothing but drink tea, and wine, and laugh, and look at trees, and smell the Earth. How is that a tenable philosophy, when there is so much CRAP that needs to get done in real life?

So no, I wasn't going to buy into that today. 

I got to thinking: on rough days, I enter into this in-between state where I am not fully in one place or another. I don't let myself linger among the things I adore. I cut myself off from the things I would do and say and see and taste and feel if it was truly my last day. But at the same time, I cannot fully commit myself to the land of the banal, the land of duty. So I kind of... float. Noncommittal.  Usually this is when I check Pinterest. Or read Twitter. Or mope, and feel bad about myself and my life in general. 

So, back to Twitter. I did click that link, and read that post, and oh, I was wrong about not needing to read it. I exactly, yes, needed to read it. I wiped tears from my eyes and got back to work, but then on my Spotify shuffle came "What Do I Know of Holy?" by Addison Road. 

And I dropped to my knees right here in my office, and I prayed for real, for the first time in a while. And for the first time in what feels like forever, I just listened.

My day changed.

I did some really productive, inspired work.

Then, when I went out to get my daughter from the bus, she stepped off smiling. The long, curly hair I had argued with her over that morning flowed down her back, the wind picking up pieces and tossing them around behind her. She fast-talked about her day, laughing, as we walked the short block home. I swear she was taller than this morning. She was beautiful, and funny, and tremendous, and growing, and mine, and not mine. I got to be there with her in that moment, and it felt like a privilege.

We went inside, and as the sunlight filtered through the trees in our golden woods behind our house, my daughters bounced on my bed and jumped on our yoga ball and we laughed together. We ate dinner in harmony - and our picky 8-year-old tried and even liked Tikka Masala. (!) I hugged my husband a lot. I made a banner for our reading nook. I felt whole.

This afternoon I read that post... then heard that song... then prayed that prayer... and all at once my vision changed. Now I was seeing things differently. I could see that my life was tinged with holy, tinted with sacred, reflecting joy.

And, you know? I think it's always there. Often, I shut it out, because in reality I want it all, all the time. It hurts too much to only have it halfway, only sometimes. But today... I let it in, and it was lovely.

I hope I can let it in tomorrow, and the next day, too.