12.31.21 Twenty-Two Things to Look For

“I’m going to make everything around me beautiful – that will be my life.”

Elsie de Wolfe

I can’t believe I am sitting only hours away from 2022. I can’t believe it because I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing one year ago today, and honestly … I don’t feel like much changed in 2021. Sometimes, I expect more from myself than what I accomplish and it makes me feel ho-hum, and then I see a sky like this one … like the one I was blessed enough to witness a few weeks ago and I think maybe, sometimes – I’ve missed the point entirely.

I’ll bet there are a million moments in my day that are this brilliant, this bold, but in my search for whatever I think I’m supposed to be trying, or doing, or achieving: I miss them. After thinking about it, I don’t want to focus on goals or self-improvement this year so much as I want to focus on twenty-two things to look for and appreciate every day. What about you?

Twenty-Two Things to Look For

1. The wide-open sky, filled with sun, and storms, and wishes
2. The smile someone is waiting to share with me
3. Eye-contact with whomever I’m given the opportunity to speak to
4. The comfort of familiar places
5. The recognition of a precious memory in a photograph I’ve framed
6. The opportunity to make someone feel important
7. God in the details
8. The sound of nature making itself known
9. The moment given to me in which I am allowed to dream
10. The gratitude I should feel for my body
11. Hope on the smallest and grandest of scales
12. The love that I wake up and go to sleep beside
13. The hug someone (most likely me) has been aching for
14. The ability to fall into my imagination freely, at will
15. Words that I hear, read, and feel
16. The attention I am given when someone listens to me
17. The positions of wife, mom, daughter and friend that I am able to adopt in a single day
18. Miracles abounding in plain sight
19. The moments I am needed
20. Something that makes me genuinely laugh
21. Prayers of my past coming true
22. The chance to get it right again tomorrow