Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Faith

Drops of Art

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So many great things have come from this Drops of Awesome idea. I’ve made real and true friends, heard stories that will forever change me, both in writing and in person, and I’ve gotten to speak to women in groups around the Pacific Northwest about how to be kinder to themselves. Every time I speak on the topic, I find myself surprised at how badly I need the message… again.

But one of the coolest things to come out of that post is this amazing artwork created by Brandon A. Miltgen, an artist and blogger at Drawing Faith:

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Ask me if he’s sending me a high-res copy to blow up huge and hang over the couch in my family room. Go ahead. Ask me. I love the creativity that went into designing and executing this piece and I love that he shared it with me. He should really sell prints of this one. Are you reading this, Brandon? You should really sell prints. Go check out his blog. There’s a whole bucket of awesome over there.

Sunburnt

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After six years working with the teenage girls at church, I’ve moved on to a new job. It’s… a “little” different. The class of three-year-olds in the Mormon church are called Sunbeams and I’ve written about the experience of teaching them over at the Time Out For Women blog.

“Sunbeams are warm and lovely, vibrant and life-giving. But if you get too close, they will incinerate you.”
[read more at TOFW.com]

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.

Merry Christmas

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“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.'”

~I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

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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.

Speedily Down to Hell

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Today in the car, Magoo noticed that several cars were speeding past us.

Magoo: They are going off the speed limit mom! Totally!
Me: Yep. They’re going pretty fast.
Magoo: They’re going too fast. We don’t drive like that.
Me: Hrm.
Magoo: We don’t drive off the speed limit because we don’t want to get a ticket.
Me: That, and we want to choose the right and obey the law.
Magoo: Yeah. Maybe they just don’t know about speed limits.
Me: Hmmm.
Magoo: Or maybe they just don’t know about Jesus.

In his mind, Jesus equals good. If you are doing what’s good, you’re following Jesus and if you’re doing what’s bad, you are not. He gives you the benefit of the doubt though. If you’re doing something wrong, you may just not know that Jesus exists so you don’t have the option of following him. This can be broadened to include speeding, favorite color choices, not eating your vegetables.

It makes me want to watch my speedometer a little more closely. After all, I’m a good Christian woman. I might as well drive like it.

Meeting Maria

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I stayed home from church today with a pathetic sickly Wanda. She’s got a snuffly nose, a cough, a rattle and a roll. She can’t sleep without a binky but she can’t breathe WITH a binky so we are at an impasse. There is a lot of crying and snarfling going on.

I’m just getting over something similar to what she has, although I looked a lot less cute when it was my turn so I tried to nap in between rescuing her from the suffocating bink and alternately calming her with it.

When I woke up from my nap, the kids were watching a movie, something we don’t do much of on Sundays and Dan and I decided it wasn’t a great Sabbath day movie choice. I’m not sure that there’s anything religiously wrong with Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, although the male/female relations are somewhat of an archetypal muddle. I think we decided it wasn’t a great Sunday movie because it sucks.

So we let them watch a movie that does not suck. According to my Grandpa, who saw it around one hundred times in the theatre when it was released, it’s about the un-suckingest movie that has ever and will ever be made. The hills are alive with it. You guessed it. We watched The Sound of Music.

I cried when they sang about the problem with a certain young novitiate named Maria. I cried when she had confidence in sunshine. I bawled my eyes out when she taught the children how to verbalize Solfège and don’t get me started on Maria’s favorite things. It is too much. I love that movie. It’s in my blood.

I love it because it reminds me of how happy my childhood was, even though my sister made me be Rolf when we danced along with “Sixteen Going on Seventeen.” It was a charmed childhood. Tonight I proclaimed that when Dan and I dress up as Rolf and Liesel for Halloween, I get to be the girl, all pretty in pink and he can be the pre-Nazi messenger boy.

Laylee was enthralled, talking about what an amazing governess Maria was. As I child I liked Maria, but I don’t remember thinking she was all that amazing. Weren’t all moms kind of like that? She very much reminded me of my own mom but with shorter hair and a guitar.

The best comment of the night came when the nuns were singing about Maria at the beginning of the movie and Magoo sat with a disgusted look on his face and said, “Why do they just go on and ON and ON and ON about it?”

We stopped for bed just as the Von Trapp family singers were climbing trees, about 5 minutes pre-firing, about 7 minutes pre-Edelweiss, somewhere near 20 minutes pre-most-romantic-dance-scene-ever.

So far my kids think it’s a happy movie with lots of singing and too many nun parts. But wait. It gets better. Tomorrow we get to finish up with icky romantic love and Nazis. Maybe we should just watch the first half again.

P.S. “Favorite Things” is still not a Christmas song.

Unplanned Emergency Drill

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If it’s unplanned, some people might call it an “actual” emergency but no one died so I’d like to refer to it as a drill.

Monday night we were staying up a little late to watch our new favorite show Castle and I told Dan I could smell something coming in the house from the garage. We went out to investigate and found that the super strong smell was filling the entire garage and we couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Having never been trained as a general contractor or a disaster-sniffing K9, I had no idea what the smell was or where it was coming from.

It could have been a gas leak, a motor failure, burning electronics, or maybe even a can of rancid food that had exploded in our storage shelves. Dan and I sniffed our way around the garage and even aired it out to get a better feel for source. In the end we decided that it was probably a furnace issue, turned off the furnace for the night and Dan headed inside to bed.

Now here’s how I know someone was looking out for me. I suddenly felt an urge to rearrange things in the garage, the garage that I’d let fester for months, the garage in which it was 11 o’clock pm and I had a sleeping baby in the house where I should have been sleeping as well. I just had a feeling I should move some stuff around.

As I walked by the electrical box, I heard a skittering sound. Thinking it was likely a rodent of some sort, I decided to stay away from that part of the garage but a few minutes later I noticed a swollen, bulging, water-soaked cardboard box on the shelf next to it. When I went to investigate, I found that one of our water bottles had a slow leak and had made a bit of a mess on the shelf and I decided I’d rather clean it up sooner than later.

So I spent the next several minutes mopping up the water, long enough to hear that the skittering sound was coming from inside the breaker box which was crackling and popping and giving off a burning smell but no visible smoke.

Looking down around the breaker box I noticed that directly in front of it was our kerosene heater full of fuel, a box of Duraflame logs and our wood supply. It was a perfect stack of kindling and accelerants. Nice. I called Dan out to have a look while I moved the flammables away from the fire hazard.

He went inside to turn off our computers before turning off the electricity to the house and my job was to stay by the box in case it burst into flames. And what was I to do then? Stop them with my laser vision? I had no idea because we couldn’t find our fire extinguisher. We both totally knew where it was. Only problem being – neither of us could actually locate it.

When I talked to my sister about this on the phone the next day, she said she totally knew where hers was. A minute later, she started grumbling, “It’s not there.” It took her several minutes to track it down, by which time her house would have burnt to the ground. So I encourage each of you to go today and find your fire extinguisher and give it a little pat so that you know that you really know where it is. And while you’re at it, check the expiration date.

Anyway, when we got the electricity turned off, I still wasn’t feeling safe enough to go to sleep while my children slept above that box. So we called the fire department to make sure we were okay. They jumped in the rig and stopped by with their giant red truck, their heat-detecting gun and their big huge pants. The box was still hot but not sparking and they told us we’d be fine and to call an electrician in the morning.

I just feel so blessed that we were able to figure things out in time to not be burnt to a crisp in our beds. If we hadn’t stayed up late… if I hadn’t smelled the smell from the garage… if I hadn’t decided to rearrange things when I should have been sleeping… if that bottle hadn’t leaked, drawing my attention to the breaker area, who knows what would have happened to us? I know Heavenly Father is protecting and looking out for my family and that’s a very comforting feeling.

We had one night without power and the next day, Dan was able find an honest and capable electrician who fixed things up to the tune of less than $200. Wild, wild night.