1. Each other
2. Ice cream
3. Hands to rub feet with
The question to these answers? Well, that’s a topic of eternal significance.
One of the kids was having a bad day, someone with a lot of hills to climb. Some days are harder than others, but this night we were alone with no siblings to interrupt. I was upset because of his response to something that seemed trivial to me. Because it dealt with a child’s heart, it wasn’t really trivial, of course, but honestly, it came down to someone feeling sorry for themselves.
6. Newly painted walls
26. Roses that look like the sunset
30. Baby’s heartbeat
Teaching a child about heroic virtue is pretty hard. First, they don’t often witness a great example of it (at least in my children’s cases). But second, sometimes teaching them not to feel sorry for themselves is complicated when they really have something to feel sorry about.
32. Eggs Benedict
37. Rainstorms
39. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament together
I fear that in our day and age, first-world people are given every opportunity to feel sorry for themselves. Somehow, even other people’s sufferings can become about us. We have everything at our fingertips to vent about anything from a bad experience at a restaurant to a friend’s betrayal. There are entire movements and hashtags created for the sole purpose of sharing our personal injuries and annoyances. Some could fairly be called trivial; others are sincere traumas. Perhaps those outlets can be therapeutic for some, but, dare I say it, the victim identity is growing rapidly in our culture, and it’s taking us rapidly to hell.
43. PNE petting zoo
45. Clean carpets
48. Popcorn makers
62. Andrew Emmanuel Roy
65. Baby giggles
I don’t want my children to be “victims” who revel in the unfairness of life. I want them to look outside themselves while taking care of themselves. I want them to have a firm grasp of the spiritual reality that they are owed nothing but given Everything.
74. Forgiveness
75. First steps
76. First birthdays
So, how do you resist victimization in a culture that tells its children they should publicly post every unfair thing that ever happened to them, to an audience ready to encourage resentment and feelings of self-pity? The best answer I can come up with is gratitude.
85. Heartbeats found (Nicolas Gabriel)
87. Sleeping babies
Mother Teresa said, “The best way to show my gratitude is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.” As I said, it’s tough to be joyful in times of sincere suffering. But if the world can only offer us ongoing encouragement to stay put in our self-pity, the only defence is recognizing the reality of our many blessings.
The child I was dealing with needed something to take him out of his sorrow. I dug into the bottom of an old drawer and pulled out the dirty, torn magnetized notepad that had graced our fridge from our first days as a married couple. Scott and I would randomly write on it things we were grateful for. Sometimes it would be forgotten for months at a time, but then some small mercy, a box of ice cream discovered at the back of the freezer, or a baby sleeping through the night, would re-ignite the habit.
88. Peaches to share
89. Backyards
I don’t know that I was a naturally grateful person, but the intentional act of looking for things to be grateful for quickly unveils a beautiful reality. The question to the answers was simply, “God has blessed our lives with ...”
I showed my suffering child this list, I showed him his name on it and told him that on some days maybe the only thing we can be grateful for is a pillow to end the day on. “But, oh, isn’t that pillow the best thing ever?”
But most days, if we have eyes to see, are made up of enough small blessings to remind us we are made for, and made by, Love. Our trials are real, and we’re allowed to recognize that. It takes a deliberate, intentional choice, though, to recognize the superfluous blessings that surround us, and more so, to see that most of the greatest blessings come to us when we don’t actually deserve them.
93. His resurrection
The sheets of our fridge magnet gratitude list were filled over 10 years ago, and it has mostly fallen apart. It’s definitely time to start a new one. Want to join me in an act of deliberate gratitude?
Says St. Augustine of Hippo, “O my God, let me remember with gratitude and confess to thee thy mercies toward me.”