Wherever we Are

According to my yoga training I am supposed to attempt to be present in this moment.  I am supposed to take advantage of this moment by acknowledging it, appreciating it, being grateful for it.  Today is one of those days filled with moments I'd rather forget.  Moments when I lost my cool, or when my kids lost their cool, or when I felt so sick and tired I could hardly have gotten out of bed if it weren't for the one kid shouting about how the other kid just threw all the bath towels in the bath tub full of water...

How should I appreciate these terrifyingly disgustingly disturbing moments?

Like when you go outside to check on the dinner you've been planning and marinating for days, made special for company, only to find the BBQ appears to have (at some unnoticed point in the last half hour) been engulfed in flames and totally given up the ghost....dinner a burnt offering to the apparently vengeful BBQ god.

Or like when you're in the middle of shouting at your kid that if they had started practicing piano fifteen minutes ago instead of farting around they could have been done by now and they choose that moment to fall off the piano bench and hit their head with a sickening crunch on the floor?

Or like when your kid is begging and nagging and hounding you to let them eat more Halloween candy and you find yourself manipulating their naive enthusiasm to bribe them into doing something they should have done without being asked?

Or like when you haven't slept through the night in weeks and your kid is downstairs crying your name and you actually find yourself thinking, "Maybe I can pretend I don't hear him"...and you sort of hate yourself.

Oh Lord.  What I come to see after writing it all out (and crying to my mother-in-law over a cup of tea), is that I am thankful the kid didn't drown in the tub instead of the towels.  I am thankful the house didn't catch fire when the BBQ exploded.  I am thankful the head smashing didn't require a visit to the ER.  I am thankful that no matter how manipulative I am, my children still seem to know that I love them and I am so thankful I am not the only adult influencing their growth process.  I am thankful for the little boy who comes stomping up the stairs shouting, "I'm awake!!" after naptime and wants, before anything else, to give his baby brother a hug (yes, the baby in my belly).

I am thankful, but it is so hard to see past my anger and anxiety sometimes.  It is so hard to see past the blame and guilt I cast on myself, to the beautiful, forgiving, loving-ness my family and friends cast on me.  But it is there.

I learn again and again that, wherever we are - this moment or the next or next week or next year - I can find something for which to be thankful...even if it's only, "Whew, that could have been a lot worse".