the day you choose grace

Live in the moment. Notice the now. Count your blessings.

Carpe diem.

You’ve heard the advice, maybe even given the advice when someone’s needing to remember, or you’re needing to remember, that life really is beautiful if you really look. That when you notice what you have, you notice that you’re blessed.

I’m not arguing. It is true. Practicing gratitude can change a life. Choosing to notice the now and count your blessings can change how you see everything. Corrective lenses that open the eyes of the heart, bring grace into real focus.

And that Carpe diem? Seizing the opportunities of the day? Of course we should do this. That gift of 24 hours we’ve just been given? Those 23 thousand or so breaths that we take for granted every day? We know we’re not guaranteed the next one so why in the world would we not carpe the diem and all that it offers? Seize the day, accept the gift, open hands and heart wide to receive grace.

Only sometimes? Some days?

Yeah, there’s not much to seize, if you want to know the truth of it.

Some days are just hard and noticing grace takes too much time and we don’t really have the time anyway because putting out fires or nursing wounds is just taking so much time.

Some days you just want to stay under the covers and who in the world am I to say that you shouldn’t want this?

See, here’s the thing: I believe in positivity. I believe in looking for the good, the blessing, the joy and the grace and I’m convinced after a lot of trips around the sun that joy and good and blessing are here and that grace is always.

But I will never, not in a hundred-thousand-years ever, ever, ever deny anyone the right to go ahead and say that today stinks, because I know that there are moments, days, maybe even years, when the stench of hard is just hard in the nostril, and who am I to deny that? Who am I to deny you the right to rightly name it?

Some days stink. Sometimes there’s nothing in the diem to carpe no matter how much you want to carpe it.

Some days? Yeah, some days it’s okay to go ahead and say that today is hard and that today stinks and that today there is nothing to seize.

Only please? Can I just ask one thing? One little, tiny request?

Don’t stay there. Go ahead and let today be a no-good-horrible-rotten day, if it’s decided that’s what it wants to be.

But don’t force tomorrow to be one too. Let tomorrow be its very own self.

I know (oh boy do I know) – it’s hard to wake up and decide to begin again. Hard to decide that today will be different, that today I’ll try to see beauty and grace even if it’s hiding real good.

Hard to believe sometimes that He really is with us and that He really has a plan and that today really could be the day that gratitude really could change a life, but what if?

What if He is really with us, and what if He really does have a plan, and what if today – this day – really could be the day that gratitude really does change a life?

And what if you could actually choose to believe it?

Choose to believe that His mercies really and truly are new each morning? Choose to believe that this moment, this now, these blessings – this diem – really might be the diem that has something amazing to carpe in it, gift of grace in it, light and love and joy and potential wrapped up and waiting to be discovered?