Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Aspirations

Drops of Awesome – The Book – Coming Soonish

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I’m thrilled, in that YayButOhWOWIHaveTonsOfWorkToDo sort of way, to announce that I just signed on with California-based publisher Familius to create a book based on the ideas in my blog post, Drops of Awesome. I cannot think of a better partner for this project. They are amazing!

Here’s me signing the digital contract with the help of my closest advisors minus one because he’s manning the camera. And when I say “manning”? Yow! You’ll have to take my word for it.

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The post, based on inspiration that has helped me change my entire outlook on life, resonated with a bucket-load of people around the world and your stories and kind words have really informed the direction I’ve decided to go with the project. There were a ton of options and I considered each one over the past year and tried writing a couple of them.

Christopher Robbins of Familius first contacted me back in January, interested in having me write for their website and possibly pursue a book project. Familius is a new publisher with its sole mission being to help families be happy. I loved the idea and it jives with what I aim for here on DaringYoungMom.com, but I wasn’t sure about the project. Drops of Awesome has a lot of religious significance for me personally, and their company does not cater to a religious audience. They believe that all families are important and that there are universal practices that can help make all people happier. I believe this too, but I just didn’t know how to separate Drops of Awesome from its religious underpinnings or if I even wanted to.

So we exchanged a few emails and when he told me that they were branching out into children’s fiction, I sent him pages from my completed YA Novel Dark Bird and my Middle Grade work in progress.

Six months passed.

I continued being Awesome. A bit. Drop by drop.

I spoke about Drops of Awesome at women’s events large and small in Oregon and Washington and had a blast doing it, meeting new people and hearing their stories. Interestingly, I heard from agnostics and atheists in person and online who were just as enthused about incorporating Drops of Awesome into their lives as any of the Christians who’d read it.

I worked on a Drops of Awesome book in its various forms and started to feel stuck. The religious version of the book was not going well. I sounded like a bit of a wind-bag, honestly. It’s a small idea and I was trying too hard.

Then, out of nowhere, Christopher from Familius emailed to set up a phone conversation about my fiction. As we discussed the work I’d sent him and I got a better idea of their mission and the work they do, I told him I was open to discussing a Drops of Awesome project. I’d been feeling more and more like it was something I could and should open up to a broader audience.

He suggested that I consider writing it as a journal or gift book.

Hmmm.

We agreed that I’d mull it over and get back to him in two weeks with a proposal. As soon as I started working on Drops of Awesome as a journal, things started flowing. Suddenly, it wasn’t me writing a book, preaching at you. It was me co-authoring a book WITH you. I’d share ideas and then invite you to share your own. Rather than being a book for you to sit down and read passively, it was becoming a well for you to draw from, but also a bucket where you could capture all of your Awesome, a journey of self-discovery for both of us.

Design is really important to me and having a book that looks fresh and feels good to hold, manipulate and write in is crucial. Before we negotiated a contract, we negotiated paper samples. It had to feel right and be writable on-able. It had to fit in your purse.

Most of the ideas behind Drops of Awesome are universal, regardless of your background or beliefs. These concepts resonate with people from every walk of life because we have more in common than we have differences. We all have important missions to fulfill in our lives. We are all uniquely qualified to achieve our highest personal goals. But, we also all fall prey to many of the same destructive thought patterns.

-Many of us obsess over and wish we could change the past, but we can’t.
-Too many of us spend too much time listening to that voice inside our heads telling us we’re not good enough, that our best efforts are failures because the one thing we’re not doing is the only thing that matters.
-We verbally abuse ourselves in ways we would never think about using on others.

If the entire world would adopt an attitude of living in the moment, putting our best foot forward one tiny Drop at a time and then celebrating those efforts, the entire world would change for the better.

So, what I’ve come up with is a concept for a book that will be interactive, playful, and hopefully as life-changing for you as getting to this point has been for me.

The book is set to release in Fall of 2014 and I’m excited to share it with you! In the meantime, I will be blogging here and at Familius.com about the concepts in the book and the progress of the project. I have also created a resource page on this blog for my LDS readers, who want to experience Drops of Awesome through the lens of spiritual belief.

Go forth! Be AWESOME!

Just Draw a Doggone Dragon

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For the first time ever, Magoo has a teacher who is requiring participation in the PTA art competition, Reflections. It’s always been optional for him in the past and when he said he wasn’t interested, I said a quiet prayer of thanks not to have one more thing to mount on styrofoam board and told him that was just fine with me.

Laylee, on the other hand, ALWAYS does reflections. Sometimes she does art, sometimes poetry, and one year she composed a song because, “Hardly anyone does songs, Mom. I decided this was the easiest way to make it to State.” This year, she is using the shotgun approach, entering a piece in pretty much every artistic discipline.

Then there’s Magoo. I asked him what he wants to do and he said, “Make a movie.”

Now, I majored in film in college and still aspire to pick up where I left off and direct documentaries when I grow up, after my kids grow up. However, I was not thrilled with this choice. There are a few reasons for this.

1. The entry is due in four weeks.
2. He has never shot footage of anything other than his own tonsils as he pretends to eat the video camera.
3. He has never used video editing software before.
4. And this is the big one – HE WANTS THE FILM TO BE A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT OUR FAMILY A CAPELLA GROUP.

We love a capella. Our whole family loves it. We have not been able to get enough of Vocal Point since they were on The Sing-Off. (GO COUGS!)

And every time we listen to one of their songs and my sweet, adorable and betimes suspiciously-close-to-tone-deaf children sing along with the various parts, I talk about how one day we will have our own VonThompson Family A Capella group. I’m a little bit serious about this, but mostly kidding and I don’t dwell too much on logistics, like the fact that all the females in our family are altos or four-year-olds, and all the males in our family are Dan and Magoo.

Magoo can do a mean hi-hat sound and his beatbox skills grow stronger every day… but the actual formation of the group at this juncture is premature at best, deranged at worst. Making a documentary about the process, which ends with a video of our family performing an a capella version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller? Where all filming, editing, and planning needs to be done by this person?

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Oh, sweet mercy!

The problem is not that it will be bad and he’ll feel rejected when he doesn’t make it to State. The problems is that it will be what it will be and he will make it to state because what other third grader is making a film OF THEIR NON-EXISTENT FAMILY A CAPELLA GROUP for their project when they could do a pencil sketch of a dragon and put their dear mother out of her misery?

And I should be excited about this. I majored in docu-freakin-mentary film production, for the love of Pete’s Humongous Reptile! Alas. I am not.

But when I tried to dissuade him, he shed tears, like actual moisture dripping from his ocular cavities. Now, what can I do? What would Martin Scorsese’s mom have done? I guess I teach him how to storyboard and get Wanda into some emergency voice lessons. She turned four earlier this month. Maybe she could be our soprano.

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Beautiful

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Today, as we’re leaving the soccer field, he asks if he can play at the skate park on the way home. He asks this most days after soccer practice and I always say no. Sometimes we’re in a rush to get somewhere. Usually we’re hungry, and generally there are a slew of tweenish and teenish boys and their female hangers-on doing cool tricks, smoking, and proving that they’re hardcore by dropping f-bombs as frequently as possible.

*Disclaimer – I am sure there are other lovely young people at the park skating, humming Taylor Swift songs, and saying things like “gosh” and “shucks,” and shunning all legal addictive substances, but they just don’t pick up as loudly on my Parental Freakout Meter. I’m sure YOUR kid, if he were hanging out at the skate park, is the Taylor Swiftiest and I’m not accusing you of raising a ruffian. I am accusing the other parents… who are not you. Please don’t email me about this, Citizens of My Town, USA.*

So, Magoo asks why he can’t hang out there and I say that it’s because there are bigger kids smoking and swearing and it’s not a great environment for him. And then he starts asking questions about smoking and addiction and cancer and all things cigarette-related that I’ve ever told him to scare him from ever ever putting a burning bundle of who-knows-what into his mouth and inhaling.

And then he says, “Can, you know, like, beautiful people smoke?” He’s sort of hemming and hawing. “Like, you know, beaut… Like if there was a beautiful…” Here he sort of trails off, gathering his thoughts and starts again.

“Monday at the fair I saw a woman who looked just like you and she was smoking and I was confused because I didn’t think that people who looked like you could smoke.”

I was quiet, trying not to choke up. So, when my eight-year-old boy thinks of what a beautiful woman looks like, he pictures me? I’ve heard stories where old men talked about their beautiful angel mothers and I think it’s sweet but I always thought they had to be old and looking back in retrospect to see their mother that way.

I’m not the hottest chick on the block. Rarely do random men flirt with or even really give me the time of day. I think what’s beautiful to Magoo and what’s beautiful to me about this story is that he knows I love him and that there’s a light in my eyes for him and that I’m trying to be the best that I can be most of the time. Beauty to Magoo is an effort towards goodness and that makes me so proud.

Of course I could not mention this to him. I had to ignore the accidental compliment, act cool, and tell him that, yes, beautiful people can smoke, but that over time it tends to make them less beautiful and more enslaved to addiction and disease.

And then I walked with an extra bounce in my step the rest of the night. That’s what beautiful people do, when they are not busy smoking.

I Tried so Bad!

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Lately the kids in our family add “so bad” to the end of any sentence to mean they are really serious about what they’re saying. Examples:

Cousin Ellie while swimming – “Kick so bad, mom. Kick so BAD!”

Wanda – “OH MOM! I’m excited so BAD!”

*First off, I want to say, if you have a fear of spandex, skip this post and come back and read tomorrow. I promise not to post so many pictures of myself in uber tight clothing probably ever.*

So today, I tried so bad! I completed the sprint triathlon. It started with going to bed early last night, only to be awoken by a crazy loud thunderstorm. Stephanie, my training partner, said she got up during the storm and checked today’s weather report, nervous about the swim. I convinced myself that it was just a dream and went back to sleep, a sleep in which I apparently twisted my arm in half and pinned it beneath my body, because when I woke up, I had pain shooting up and down my arm, radiating from the elbow every time I put pressure on my arm to do things like lift a cup, or cut my eggs with a fork.

On a normal day, I would have skipped working out and iced the arm, but today was TRI-DAY! So committed was I to this triathlon, that I asked myself the question, “If I were an 1800s pioneer woman, crossing the plains with ox and wagon, would I keep going with this level of pain, or would I tell them to leave me behind to be eaten by American dingos?” The answer was not dingos, so I knew I had to “tri.” Ah, that pun never gets old. Ever.

We got there bright and early and put out all our gear. I thought it was a good sign that my number was the cornerstone of the standard multiplication table. Then some nice massage therapist guy rubbed my arm and told me to try warming up and stretching. I told him I had been warming up and stretching by walking around laughing at all the thick-necked guys very showishly warming up and stretching. He almost laughed and I started doing tri stretches and waving my arms around like The Phelps. I only almost threw up as I realized that this WAS HAPPENING.

One of my favorite parts of the day has to be when I was taking one last break in the ladies’ room before the race. I’d had a feeling all morning that I’d forgotten something, and when I dropped my drawers, I almost had a heart attack. I wasn’t wearing any underwear! Now you’re not supposed to wear underwear in a tri-suit, but I don’t usually walk around in a tri-suit. You’re welcome. And I was caught off guard. Like, I started a mini-hyperventilation. How could I forget UNDERWEAR!? Oh. I breathed in and out and moved on.

When the swim started, I had planned to hang back and wait before jumping in, but was overcome with excitement and ended up diving into the melee, feet, arms and bodies all up in my face. Pretty soon we all got sorted out and I finished my ¼ mile swim in my fastest time ever! This included the swim and the run up to the transition area, an area that always reminds me of child birth, but only because of the name.

They say that transition is the “fourth discipline”, but I think the real fourth discipline is the massive nap I took when I got home. I did it so well. I even took off my tri-medal to maximize sleeping potential.

The bike was good, but hard. The fastest I’ve ever ridden 14 miles is an hour and six minutes. My goal for the tri was an hour and I made it in 59:17. Yay! I will not tell you what place that puts me in amongst the other competitors because what place that puts me in is – AWESOME! I did a stinking triathlon.

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Dan and the kids cheered me on at all the water stations and the finish line and I couldn’t help but run faster when I heard them. At one point, I ran by them as they cheered, took pictures and called my name. I pointed to each one in turn and yelled, “I’m passing you… and you… and you.” They were the only people I passed on the run. But it felt good to pwn them so hard. They were just sitting there, like they didn’t even know it was a race.

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A few seconds after I passed by, after I made eye contact with and berated each one of them, Wanda yelled, “Was that mom?!”

It was.

The only time I cried was during the run. I was really struggling to get going. You’re on a bike going a million miles an hour and then you try to run and it feels like you’re in a hamster weel with boneless legs. It’s the oddest feeling. Also, I had not one ounce of energy left. So I started out running, until I had cleared most of the spectators, and then I switched to a busy mom mall walk pace.

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Runner after runner passed me, some of them doing the Olympic distance, which is twice as far as the sprint I was attempting. They were like muscly, sweaty gazelles and I was like… not that. I only had to run a 5K to finish this thing and I was walking fast but slower… and a bit slower. Then the awesomeness started. Runner after runner, most of them male and much more fit than me, started saying encouraging things as they passed me.

“You’ve got this.”

“Looking good.”

“Keep going.”

“You’re doing great.”

“Finish this.”

They said these things quietly and continued on their run, but I just had this swelling behind my eyes, overcome with the goodness of people. If I were a hardcore athlete, would I take the time to tell the mom mall-walking her way to the finish line that she was good enough, that I understood she was doing something really hard and needed encouragement? I hope so. But I know these guys did and it made me cry and it made me walk faster and eventually run.

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The whole last half kilometer, I chanted in my head over and over again, “Walk in the shape of a run. Walk in the shape of a run. You can do this. It’s just walking in the shape of a run.”

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And I did do it.

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And I beat every time goal I set for myself.

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Over the past two years, I’ve lost 50 lbs. Over the past two months, I’ve gone from a 20 minute ¼ mile swim to a 10 minute. Over the past day, I have become a triathlete.

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And like the woman at the check-in table said, “This is your first triathlon? That’s exciting because whatever time you get will be your new personal best.”

You know what? She was right!

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Feats of Strength – an Attempt at a Productive Third-life Crisis

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I am 34… I think. I don’t have that many fingers and toes so it’s hard to accurately calculate but I’m pretty sure I’m a lot months younger than Dan, who is 35, so I will say I’m 34. Let’s just call it “early 30’s.”

The way I figger, given that I plan to live to at least a hundred years of age, that means I’m about a third of the way through my life and nowhere near a third of the way through the mental list of things I want to accomplish in my life. If you throw my increasing age and possible decrepitness into the mix, I think it would behoove me to do as many of the things on said intangible list before my fortieth birthday as possible. You know? While I can still chew my own food.

This list has been on my mind and I thought it was time I wrote it down, considering I am planning to check off one of the largest items tomorrow morning.

I am competing in a triathlon. Competing is a harsh word. I am going to complete triumphantly a sprint triathlon without injuring myself or any other person.

I’ve been training for months with my friend Stephanie, who is faster than me at swimming, faster than me at running, and who became faster than me at biking when she discovered that shifting gears actually makes a difference. Dang the do-gooder spin class friend who explained this to her!

My original goal for the tri was to finish in something better than last place. Then we looked at the finishing times for last year and my new goal is to finish the tri unscathed. We shall see.

Below is a partial list of other Feats of Strength, Skill, and Whimsy I hope to pull off in the next five and a half years:

1. Fake sky dive (I promised Dan I would never truly sky dive so this will have to suffice unless he dies before me and then the promise is void. I will wait at least one week from his funeral before suiting up and jumping out of a plane.)
2. Sing and play guitar in front of someone other than my own family members
3. Publish a book
4. Digitize and organize our family photos and videos
5. Direct a documentary film and enter it in a festival, hosted by Not My Mom
6. Complete a thorough study of the Bible with supporting documents and commentaries.
7. Scuba dive at night (happening later this summer)
8. Ride in a hot air balloon
9. Drive a car over 120 miles per hour
10. Build a piece of furniture
11. Visit Europe with Dan
12. Design and sew an article of clothing for myself without a pattern
13. Hike (at least partially) Mount Rainier
14. Visit every library in King County
15. Hike to the peak of Mount Timpanogos
16. Do an amazing act of service, something I’ll never forget
17. Teach my kids to flush the toilet

Don’t Be Their Negative Voice

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I’m really into giving myself a break lately. This morning there were no clean clothes. Pretty much none. Laundry has not been a priority lately as I’ve thrown myself into several home projects. I redecorated my writing space/office/junk room/guest room from a dungeon of despair into something beautiful and I rewired the lights in my kitchen because, according to YouTube, I am an electrician.

So when everyone was naked and frustrated this morning, I thought, Drops of Awesome. It’s been so long since everyone was naked and frustrated in the morning due to a laundry shortage. I’ve been getting much better at this domesticality thing. I am awesome.

They just sighed and lived. It’s true. All survived. Magoo wore soccer socks. Laylee searched for half an hour and found some cleanish pants and Dan just loved me anyway.

It’s kind of amazing. I could easily have let the experience ruin my entire day or week as I beat myself up, but I didn’t. I don’t like to listen to those voices anymore, the ones that tell me I’m a failure. They’re not productive. And they are jerks.

Here’s the problem. I may not listen to those voices in my own head but it doesn’t mean I don’t dish them out on my husband and kids.

A couple of nights ago, I was going over homework with Laylee. It was sloppy. It wasn’t her best effort. She could do so much more. I was being kind and constructive. I was trying to help her improve by pointing out every little imperfection. Halfway through the session, she got tearful and angry.

“Tell me what’s wrong, honey,” I prompted her.

She couldn’t talk. She was too upset. I told her to breathe and get back to me when she was ready. Half an hour passed and she tearfully and sincerely told me, “You are disappointed in everything I do.” She proceeded to list everything she felt she was doing to disappoint me and my heart broke a little. Tears came to my eyes.

I am not disappointed in this little girl. I am, in fact, in awe of her. So I feel like it’s my job to push her to fulfill her potential. And looking into her vulnerable, tearful face, I felt devastated. I’m not a John Gottman groupie, but I do believe in ratios, and as I thought about it, I really couldn’t think of many ways I’d built her up in the past couple of months. I would give myself at least a 5:1 negative to positive interaction ratio.

“You got ninety on this test. What happened here?” (pointing to the missed question)

“Were you paying attention?”

“This isn’t your best work.”

“Why is the milk out?”

“Whose shoes are these and why are they in the living room?”

“I’ve asked five times. Seriously. Set the table. How hard is this?”

“Your teacher says you’re reading when you’re supposed to be doing math.”

“You know better than that.”

“Oh, and I love you. Have a great day.”

“Why didn’t you brush your hair?”

I imagine that my kids’ negative inner voices sound a lot like me, nagging them.

I hugged Laylee. I apologized. I told her that if she thought I was disappointed in her, then I was not doing my job as a mother. Then I told her all the ways I was proud of her.

This was a Drop of Awesome. Just a drop. I can do more and I will. In that moment, that was the drop I could give. But, in that moment, I also decided that the next time I had the choice to correct her for something that did not matter, I’d hug her instead and offer to help.

So, the rest of the whole wide afternoon, I was not a nag. I was an encourager. I am an encourager. That’s who I am now. It’s on my radar. Am I perfect at it yet? Heck-to-the-ask-my-kids-NO.

Having a negative inner voice is super destructive. Having a negative outer voice, that’s embodied by your mom, who’s supposed to love you no matter what? Probably not helpful either.

Tuppence Per Each Bag

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I’ve been trying to eat well lately. In theory I’ve been trying to eat well all my life, minus college. In practice I’ve been getting progressively better for the past 5-10 years. I’ve very recently turned to a hard-core, stop-eating-anything-that-doesn’t-taste-like-a-literal-nutrient way of eating.

I’m struggling with perplexing health problems and if you have perplexing health problems, eventually you turn to examining your diet and when you examine your diet, you find that if it tastes good, there are at least ten people who live on the internet who will tell you that what you’re eating is causing your specific problem.

I don’t listen to those ten people because they obviously hate brownies.

However, last week my naturopath told me that I should consider severely limiting my grains. Also, my “random thoughts that come into my head right after I finish praying” told me I should severely limit my sugar intake.

Blech.

So I’m trying to eat like a good girl, I am. Lean meats and vegetables, baby!

But there are days when Doritos must be imbibed. So, I was having one of those days but I was trying to have it Drops-of-Awesomely, focusing on the fact that I only bought the supersized personal-sized 50% more bag, instead of the supersized FAMILY-sized 50% more bag. I planned to enjoy every morsel.

Then Wanda walked in. She had many questions, questions about what I was eating, about why she was not also eating it, about, please please, could she please eat it.

So I shared.

Begrudgingly.

If I was going to unlimit my grains, I wanted to unlimit them all the way down.

But she had cuteness on her side and I really shouldn’t have been eating that much grain, much less that much grain coated in nuclear cheese dust. I should be feeding it to my sweet, growing child person.

She started plowing through the chips faster than I would have thought possible. She’d grab one, say, “Thanks,” and leave the room. Two seconds later she’d be back for more. With increasing dog-protecting-his-bone-ish-ness, I handed them to her. Grrrr….

We made short work of the bag and I continued my quest to eat things that are green and crunchy and capable of making me feel smug and self-satisfied when I notice them hanging around like a lump in my stomach and later coming out in Dr. Oz approved luscious deposits.

But, as I went outside later to pick up my kids from the bus, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a mother lode of Doritos all over the porch and front walk.

“Look!” Wanda grinned, “I’m feeding ALL the birdies!”

It was obvious from the sheer number of slimy glowing orange chips that the birdies had absolutely zero interest, or they assumed that something the color of a construction cone was inedible, from previous painful personal experience.

So I smiled and congratulated her on her good deed-ery, sighing at all the lost cheesy goodness. And when she wasn’t looking, I threw them over the fence into the decaying bamboo forest section of my crazy-sauce back yard. I don’t know what goes on back there but we have found animal bones. And broken clay pots circa AD 1985.

Now all that’s left to do is put on all my Newsies-colored dresses and skirts in multiple layers, tease my hair like a crazy rock star homeless person and start singing on my front porch steps. “Feed the microscopic organisms in the decaying bamboo forest section of my crazy-sauce back yard. Tuppence per each bag.”

You know you’d pay money to see that. Way more fun than giving your coin to those mean old guys at the bank, right?

Drops of Thank You

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Thank you so much to everyone who read and shared my post from two weeks ago with your family and friends, maybe enemies whose attitudes you were hoping to change. The number of people who have shared their kind words and stories with me is such a throat lump, I’m not quite sure what to say.

Many of you shared very raw and personal stories and I’ve been moved to tears daily as I’ve read your comments and emails. I’m not a huge crier. Okay. I cried at the Backstreet Boys Concert. And pretty much every time I’ve ever seen a flash mob on YouTube. And because… ballerinas. But I rarely cry over blog comments.

When I first had the Drops of Awesome flash of inspiration, I desperately needed it. I was having one of the “dark times.”

As you know if you’ve read this blog for long, and most of you haven’t, (WELCOME!) I dealt with some pretty crushing panic and anxiety disorder following the birth of my second child seven years ago. It was humbling in a way I hadn’t imagined possible. To suddenly not be able to trust your own thoughts and feelings is terrifying. I’ve found some amazing help and healing but I still deal with it off and on. It’s something I may struggle with for the rest of my life.

And that’s okay.

I’ve been tested to my limit no more or less than I’m sure you have been tested to your personal limit. We grow. We gain more empathy. I know Christ didn’t learn love and empathy by spending his days in a bubble surrounded by fluffy bunnies and marshmallow peeps. He felt and experienced pain on an incomprehensible level.

So when this flash of inspiration came, I was grateful for it. It got me through a really hard time. When I felt inspired to share it with the teenagers at church, it was for them. I felt that and it was reaffirmed when one of the girls I’d had the hardest time reaching texted me that night to say she was still thinking about our lesson. I was so grateful that inspiration had come to me that was sharable, that could make a difference to someone else as well.

At the time, I put my current fiction project aside and started writing a Drops of Awesome book, that I soon abandoned. Maybe it was just inspiration for me and Young Woman X, I thought, and I was totally cool with that. But then I wrote up a short version of my thoughts in this post. It has since been shared and reposted by everyone and his mama and I’m filled with gratitude and awe. I am not alone! WE ARE NOT ALONE. And not just in a God Loves You kind of way, but also in a Shared Human Experience kind of way which seems very immediate and tender.

All that being said, since originally posting my Drops of Awesome thoughts before Christmas, and seeing how they’ve been received, I’ve been scared to post anything else.

You see? This has never really been a religious blog, not at DaringYoungMom.com or for the years I blogged at Parenting. I am religious and it sort of oozes out sometimes, but mostly I write about silly stuff. I blog about life in all its weirdness. My next post will likely be about yogurt or photo-bombing my son’s school pictures.

You might have to wait a long time for inspiration lightning to strike again. I hope it does. If it does, I will totally share it with you. If not, read back through the comments on the Drops of Awesome post, because they are… well… awesome. In the meantime, read about my yogurt and tell me about yours and we will drip away together toward something magical.

Drops of Awesome

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drops-of-awesome-010This post has been in my heart and on my mind for over a year now. I’ve talked about it. I’ve prayed about it. I’ve taught about it. I was waiting for the right time to post about it and now feels like that time. It’s a post about a tiny little moment that completely changed the way I see myself and others. As I think about it and act on what I learned, I find that I am changed in significant ways every single day.

It was a sunny school morning and I was walking Magoo to the bus stop. I don’t often walk him to the school bus. He’s in second grade and pretty independent and I’m usually busy getting myself and his sisters ready. I’m semi-nocturnal and I sleep later than I should most mornings.

When it’s time for school, he says goodbye and heads up the hill to the bus.

As we got half way to the bus, Magoo reached out and grabbed my hand in an uninhibited way that I knew wouldn’t happen many more times. He’s seven now but growing and how many 12-year-old boys do you see still swinging hands happily with their mommies?

I squeezed his hand, felt the rare Seattle sun on my face, and told him I loved him. I was nearly perfectly happy.

Nearly.

Just at that moment, the thought came into my mind, That’s awesome that you’re walking him to the bus stop and putting on this “mother of the year” act today. What about yesterday and the day before that? You hardly ever walk him to the bus. He’s probably holding your hand because he’s so desperate for the love and attention you haven’t been showing him.

My bubble had burst. I am a crap mom, I thought, as I looked down into his smiling face.

Then another thought came. Kathryn. What is wrong with you? You are being an awesome mom in this moment. Your child is happy. You are loving him and caring for him. He’s well fed and dressed. You’re walking to the bus stop in the early morning and you’re already wearing a bra for heck’s sake. Do not rob yourself of this moment’s joy because of what you failed to do yesterday or what you fear you might not do tomorrow.

This started me thinking of all the times I do something good while beating myself up for all the times I haven’t been perfect.

You’re worshiping in the temple? Woopty freakin do! How long has it been since you came here last? When are you likely to come again? You’re not good at this. This is a fluke.

Wow. So you cleaned the kitchen today. Want a cookie? That dirty rag has been on the counter for a week and those dishes you so righteously cleaned are from breakfast three days ago. You are embarrassing.

That was really nice of you to offer to watch your friend’s kids while she had surgery. Remember last week when you knew your neighbor was suffering from depression and you drove right by with a wave because you did not want to get sucked into the drama? You don’t really care about people. Not all the time.

How destructive are these kinds of thoughts?

As I said goodbye to Magoo and started to walk back home, my mind started to shift.

Drops of Awesome! I thought. Every time you do something good, something kind, something productive, it’s a drop in your Bucket of Awesome. You don’t lose drops for every misstep. You can only build. You can only fill.

I walked Magoo to the bus. Drop of Awesome!

I fed him fruit with breakfast. Drop of Awesome!

I told him I loved him. Drop of Awesome!

I wore a bra and brushed my teeth before schlepping it up that hill. Two Fat Drops of Awesome!

All day long I chanted these words in my head. I picked up that tootsie roll wrapper off the front porch instead of stepping over it for the eleventy hundredth time. Drop of Awesome! I unloaded one dish from the dishwasher when I walked through the kitchen on my way to the bathroom. Drop of Awesome! I texted my sad neighbor to say I was thinking about her. Drop of Awesome! I had a critical thought about one of my kids and I brushed it away and replaced it with love. Drop of Awesome!

When I started thinking about my life in terms of adding these little Drops of Awesome for every tiny act of good, I found that I was doing more and more of them because it’s a lot more fun to do good when you’re rewarded with joy, rather than being guilted about every failure in your past.

By the end of the day, I had realized something important. If I was spending time with my kids, really listening to them with attention in the moment, then I was a good listener, regardless of the 50 other times I’d brushed them off or multi-tasked while they were talking over the past week. If I was engaged in sincere prayer with my Heavenly Father, really communing with him and seeking his will, then I was a person who engages in sincere prayer, regardless of how my prayers were (or weren’t) yesterday and the day before that and the day before that.

As I added up these Drops of Awesome, I found that in those moments I actually became the person I had always wanted to be.

Have you ever said any of these things: “Well, I guess I don’t work out anymore,” because you missed one workout? Or, “I always fight with my brother. Our relationship is broken.” What about, “I’m kind of a nag to my spouse.” Or “I gossip and I always end up hurting people I love.” “I can’t stop spending money. We will never get out of debt.” “My house is always a disaster.”

These things are lies, depending on the next decision you make, the next Drop of Awesome you put in your bucket. You may have done these things or have a hard time with them but they don’t define you and you can change this very instant. You may not think you can change permanently but you can change the next choice you make. And as you change that one next tiny choice, you may think, I got this one Drop of Awesome but I may never be able to get another one again.

And that’s okay.

You made the right choice once. And in that moment you were the person you want to be and that is a triumph. For one night, you were a person who went to bed early. One morning you woke up and the first words out of your mouth were positive so you were a morning person in that moment. Bam! Drop of Awesome.

You do not need to wait three months to be who you want to be. Pick up ten things right now and say, “Drops of Awesome! I am someone who takes care of my house. That is who I am. I have proof.”

In the end, it’s really about allowing yourself to feel joy and allowing yourself to be proud of the small victories of life. This builds momentum and you want more drops in your bucket and when you don’t get as many, you pick yourself up and say, “What can I do next?”

Now, there are a whole lot of religious implications to this because, as a Christian, I believe that you are not the only one adding these Drops of Awesome to your bucket. Christ commanded us to be perfect, but through His atonement, He is with us every step of the way.

As an object lesson when I was teaching this to the teenage girls at church, I gave them each a small dropper and I put a 2-quart bowl on the table. I told them that throughout the lesson they would get the chance to put drops in the bucket for every Drop of Awesome they could think of that they’d done. I promised them that we would fill the bowl to overflowing by the end of the lesson.

With about 5 minutes to go, we had barely begun to fill the bowl and the girls were looking around at each other nervously. The promised overflow did not look likely. Were they not awesome enough?

At that point, I pulled out a large pitcher labeled ATONEMENT and poured water into the glass bowl until it was spilling out all over the table and the towel the bowl was resting on. The class went silent.

When we are in a relationship with Christ, striving as God’s sons and daughters to do His will, He pours more into our buckets than we can ever hope to imagine. He can fill us to overflowing with peace, with joy, with perfection, with Awesome. And then what do we do if our bucket is overflowing like that? Where does the Awesome go then?

I pulled out an identical bowl, twice the size of the original. Our capacity for joy and light increases. And we just keep working, one tiny drop at a time. And we don’t compare today’s drops to yesterday’s or tomorrow’s. And we live and we love and we repent when we do wrong and we allow ourselves to be glorious, beautiful, and dare I say perfect in Christ, children of God.

I believe in a God who loves us and roots for us and cheers for every Drop of Awesome we can manage. Our victories are His victories and He wants us to feel joy. Not later, when we no longer make mistakes, but right now.

I’m gonna close this uber long post out with a scripture from the Book of Mormon. I know many of you do not share my faith but I think you’ll find truth in these words:

“Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.” (Alma 37:6)

Small and simple. Tiny drops. Go forth. Be Awesome.

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The Drops of Awesome: You’re-More-Awesome-Than-You-Think Journal is now available from Amazon. Collect your drops!

Also help yourself remember to recognize your small victories with a Drops of Awesome wristband.

dropsbook

Light

by

What do you do when the world seems full of darkness? Fill it with light. I had the talk with my kids today – the “bad people exist and there’s nothing we can do about them but there’s something we can do about us” talk.

I’d say it went well. I was the only one who cried and no one vomited and they’re currently asleep safe in their beds, hopefully with dreams of sugarplums in their little noggins. I wanted them to hear about Connecticut from me, not from their friends at school.

Today’s massacre makes me sad and sick and steers me toward hopeless. But after getting advice from my wise sister, I told my kids what I needed to hear. We cannot change other people. We can love them. We can pray for them. But we cannot control their decisions. We can only control our own.

So for every crazy, merciless, mentally ill terrorist who destroys life, and light, and innocence in this world, for every act of darkness, I need to do a thousand acts of light. The only way we win is by living better, by pushing back harder, by loving, and by nurturing in tiny and slightly less tiny ways and then repeating. Darkness only wins when the good people of the world stop generating light.

We will never do that.

For every bully who tears someone down, I will build up 10 people. For every guy that cuts someone off in traffic, I will let three people go ahead of me. For every senseless act of violence, I will perpetrate enough acts of love and beauty to help me start to forget the sharp pang of first hearing about it. The ache will never fully go away. But that’s okay. The ache is a reminder of how much work there is for me to do.

If I am part of the light, I need to commit every day to shine brighter, to love stronger. We can never. Ever. Give up. We can never let Sandy Hook be the world we live in. It’s not even an option.