And I know that's totally cheesy and vague and kind of a cliche if you think about it, like "goodness is good" except a wee little bit less self-evident, but a temper tantrum this morning made this sentence real for me. Okay let me take some responsibility for the childishness, eh hem -- my temper tantrum this morning made me realize this. Or, maybe the experience gave birth to the sentence, spontaneously and necessarily, because the feeling needed to be expressed -- like how Alaskan native Americans (??? #citationneeded) have like a bjillion words for all the subtle variations of snow, because they have so many different experiences of it and have the need to express those subtleties of experience. Or maybe it's all this self-help stuff I've been reading manifesting itself in coherent and specifically relevant words in my head, lifted off the page and into life. Leap!
Or maybe it's both, like the circle (of liiiiiiiiiiiiiiife) or the chicken-or-the-egg? question.
But yeah -- let's read that again, just to clear the head after all that confusion about the kumbaya poultry: Gratitude is the most effective cure of temper tantrums.
I was driving (late) to church this morning, all in a huff and frustrated in a genuinely petty way (my mom had told me my outfit was weird...which is, unfortunately, a phenomenon that is topic-worthy for a whole post of its own. sigh), and just in time, Mumford and Sons came on via my iPod's shufflin' and like the whiny and dramatically juvenile (non)teenage girl I am, I turned it up up up, wanting to drown my sorrows in the soulful screechings of their banjo(s).
When I paused -- in the midst of all dat banjo --
To
Look at that dial I am touching
To control the music
Playing through the sound system of my (my!!) new car,
driving this killing-machine-personal-chauffeur(kinda)-bjillion-pounds-of-metal-and-engineering-GENIUS over which I have been given responsibility for good use, in such ABUNDANT and ABSOLUTELY UNDESERVED blessing of a gesture. Totally free, and freely given. Bestowed. To a good-for-nuthin, puerile and disgustingly ungrateful daughter who stomps for petty reasons only ALL the time and screams in capital letters about all the things she lacks. lackalackalack. (Wow. The language of grace comes so naturally, inherently Christian -- a reminder of our earthly parents' love reflecting the love of our heavenly father. Wow. It's basic and ingrained and generously repeated in copious Sunday sermons, but is always a little breathtaking.)
I have always wanted to use the word puerile in a real-life setting.
And then I started going through from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, wriggling whatever part was possible for safe wriggling, in my state of driving and all --
God thank you for my toes.
God thank you for my calves
My knees
My booty, my everything.
The last line of which sounds like some parody of a hip hop-country song mash-up, but it was all very helpful in the realization of this
Gratitude is the cure for temper tantrums thing.
What a morning of grace via hyundai. ABUNDANT and ABSOLUTELY UNDESERVED and GENIUSly unexpected and totally random, though totally not, I know.
This message has (not) been approved by the Hyundai Motor Company.
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