not feeling it

the view from here - where I've typed today - makes me glad, even with its
misplaced pile of papers and clock that hasn't "fall[en] back"

What if you just aren't feeling it?

-It's Monday.
-Everybody's crizzap from being home all weekend - with all that margin - is strewn from bow to stern, like the us-es are waiting for me to pick it up.
-I yelled at the kids for yelling, arguing, and being rowdy before it was even eight a.m.
-The laundry routine is horribly constipated.
-My body ached most of the day from running.
-Television babysat Pretty Baby while I spent entirely too long fretting over networking my blog for a bigger audience.
-I grumbled rudely on the phone to Ma Luffin Mayun about Mondays and kids always needing something and bad moods.
-I ate 900 calories too many today.
-And my toes are cold.

I mean, seriously. What if you just don't feel especially grateful? Because, clearly, sometimes you don't.  I can certainly, at the same time that I make the above list of gripes, also make a record five times as long of what I am thankful for.  But when you're not feeling it how do you turn it into action; how does the gratitude become active?

Sometimes the action has to come first, and then feelings will follow. That's how it's been for me today.

-When I wanted to stay in a warm bed lamenting Monday, I got up, faced the sunshine and the day it ushered in - even through bleary eyes.
-I picked up what I wanted to of everybody's stuff, but I stepped over and set aside what I knew they could gather up and return to its rightful place once they got home.
-Before the kids left for school I took each one of them aside alone, looked them in the eye, and told them how much I love them when they obey and are kind; that I love them just as much and no less when they don't and they aren't; that I will always love them because they are mine.
-I gave myself grace to ignore laundry for one more day.
-I moved my muscles, feeling them ache and stretching them out, and concentrated on the beauty of the fact that the soreness is because I finally ran.
-I quit trying to figure out how to network with the whole of the blogopshere, lifted my head up out of the glow of a monitor, and slammed my computer shut at midday. I turned off the TV and blared really good music all throughout the house.
-I prayed for the rest of Ma Luffin Mayun's day, that it would be more peaceful than the un-peace I had brought to it.
-I made a plan for tomorrow - a safety net - so that I don't repeat a calorie overload like today's.
-And I put on some shoes.

By the time for picking up the oldest two from school came around, I felt better. I was better. I've heard financiers and organizers talk about telling your money or time "where to go", thereby sealing up leaks because money and time have a way of seeping through cracks. Emotions and feelings are no different.

It took me until noon to decide to do it, but I finally told my feelings where to go. I got up and put them where they should be, taking an action here, another one there, until this ship was righted. I don't even know if I knew what I was doing while I was doing it, but once it was done it was ever so clear.

Sometimes you have to act your way into gratitude.

Today I'm so grateful for whatever finally propelled me into actions that restored my deep feelings of gratitude. I am acting on this gratitude by writing the record of a day - the type of which will likely roll around again - when my feeler felt funky, but in which my actions did a realignment.

This is such a rich, lavish, lovely life.  Even on Mondays.

The one bringing forth in you both the desire and the effort--for the sake of his good pleasure--is God. - Philippians 2:13