Wednesday, December 02, 2015

It's Reverb time again -- 2015: Day 1

For some years now I have participated in a writing prompt titled Reverb. It's a look back at the year that is ending and an intention for the coming year. It is always insightful.

You are invited to participate, if you'd like, by going here to sign up.  Even if all you to is to reflect on the day's prompt, it can be beneficial, but you also can post links to your blog in the daily linkys for others to read. 

So onto the first prompt: 

 “Maybe lists are like prayers.”

What sorts of lists do you have on the go at the moment?

What do they suggest you are praying for?


I am a list-maker; always have been. I write stuff down -- grocery lists, things to do, ideas, packing lists, things to remember, menus or baking projects for holidays and parties. Even if I don't write it down, there is always an agenda in my head, a list, of things I want to do each day and pretty much the order in which I intend to complete the tasks. I wake up with lists. I go to bed with lists. 

Mostly they are a sort of shorthand, however -- not the minute-by-minute to-do lists that my daughter has taken to doing so that she doesn't forget things. I write brief words, or abbreviations like 'ct fd' on my calendar, meaning "Pick up the bag of cat food at the vet's office."  I use my calendar as a list too  -- things I need to do each day or each week, events I want to remember like "RF, LM c/TG" meaning that we are going to a play with our friends and then to dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant. 

Right now I have lists for Christmas in my head -- nothing on paper yet or virtually unless you count Amazon wish lists. Gifts for others that must be purchased and sent; cookies I intend to bake; what I'm fixing for a couple of gatherings we have scheduled; holiday items I need to get for next year when they go on sale after Christmas. A list of to-dos: write holiday letter, sort through papers on my desk; get out the Christmas card holder; make sure meds are ordered through January; pick up cat food. That sort of trivia.

If my prayers are reflected in my lists, they would all be gratitude prayers for so many blessings: thank you that I feel well enough to go to the play and to a restaurant and to an event -- that I am not in afib and not hurting anywhere and have energy. Thank you that we are blessed with enough money to purchase gifts, food, shelter, medication, and pay bills and have reliable, safe vehicles, and yes, to buy enough cat food to keep our boys and girls healthy and well.  

Thank you that we can begin planning to attend a very special party in February. Thank you for friends to have lunch with, to go to events with, to send cards to. Thank you for my wonderful, devoted husband who is still recovering from extensive sinus surgery and needs an extra trip to see the doctor that requires a last-minute overnight stay. Thank you that I still have a memory and enough intelligence left to even be able to write things down and remember what they are!  Thank you that I am alive! That I am here!





1 comment:

laoghaire said...

Loved this post. I am an obsessive list maker. I make grocery lists and bills to pay lists and things to do lists. Then there are the "the what I am going to eat today list" followed by the "what I ate today list" and the " how much money I can save list", which is closely tied to the "what I spent list". It goes on and on, I write the list, I change the list and the best part is the crossing off of the list. things that are done, accomplished, measurable as if by doing this I can chart the quality of my life.

There are lists of important days and holidays planned and what I will wear this week. At work that skill came in handy - logical lists of work to be done and in what order and meetings to be taken, at work they did not find it obsessive, they thought it was "organized". Sort of like the psychopaths with good jobs theory, we do well in structured organizations. The List Makers. Blessed are they who chart their linear path through the day.

I also throw all my lists away- based on two criteria. One is the list no longer serves a purpose because everything on it is completed or two, nothing on it is completed and doesn't stand a hope in hell of ever being so and pragmatically we must revise and restart the list. Either way, list makers find old lists to be annoying, haunting even.