Have you ever been unexpectedly overwhelmed by gratitude? What story did your gratitude tell you? 

I cleaned out our art cabinet as I prepared to move. It was as long as it was deep and cluttered because of its heavy use in our home. As I cleaned, I pulled out the flotsam and jetsam from projects past and present. I found our science box that held magnets, prisms, and the skin of a cicada we found hanging on a tree. I found “Benjamin’s box of special rocks and seashells”. I found a second box full of rocks from our camping trips sitting beside it. We hate to pass by a good rock.

I found a pair of chemistry glasses with Natalie’s name written in Sharpie across the top. They were sitting beside leftover supplies she needed to make her fourth-grade “zoo habitat” for warthogs. Why did she pick a warthog? “Because,” she told me, “Mom, they are the cutest animals on safari.” She knew this personally. We visited friends in Kenya the summer after her first-grade year.

I found a collection of art supplies for the skating club’s bulletin board at the community center, and our knitting needles for the knitting class we took years ago at our local nature center. Our favorite naturalist led the class and told us stories about her pet chickens while we practiced purling on and off.

I pulled out the art supplies I toted with me to Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, preschool classrooms, and church classrooms. Our playdough toys sat on the shelf where I had put them after the toddler Valentine party at church. There was still a little residue from the chocolate playdough I made for the party at the bottom of the tub. Deeper into the shelf, I pulled out the box of paper scraps ready for little hands to tear into small pieces and glue into mosaics.

All of these random pieces of yarn, boxes of crayons, and bits of dried playdough formed their own kind of collage that told a story about our Minnesota life—creativity, exploration, and friends whose lives overlapped with ours.

As I sorted and cleaned this unexpected time capsule, I noticed I was smiling. I paused. I noticed I was feeling grateful. I’m grateful for years of messy, creative work. I’m grateful for the people in each of the communities where we sat together and painted, played with playdough, used prisms to make rainbows. I’m grateful my children experienced projects in classrooms where they needed to wear protective goggles.

What story did gratitude want to tell me that day?

It wanted to remind me that I love the process more than I love the products.

I know that the joy, the discovery, and the fun happens in the middle, in the messes we make together. Those final products—bulletin boards, mosaics, and knitted squares—weren’t actually what brought me satisfaction.

Gratitude reminded me that it is the people we are with that make life sweet. It’s all these friends and my family who shared the messy work of living alongside me that made those bits and bobs in my art cabinet sparkle.

During a retreat I attended, Ronald Rolheiser once said that “our most grateful moment is our most holy moment.” I didn’t expect to find myself in a holy moment while surrounded by clutter, dust, and a little bit of stray glitter that spilled onto the floor.

 But that’s exactly what happened.