Making Time To Notice the Good

Dolly Parton died this past week, and I'm still in shock. I never got to know her in person, of course, but she was one of those people who felt larger than life even from afar. She was sweet, funny, smart, generous. She never forgot where she came from or the life lessons she learned along the way, and for so many, she was a major part of turning difficult seasons into evidence of resilience. She cared about literacy, poverty, mortality. She cared about faith, identity, personal growth, and the kind of contentment you only find through purposeful perspective.

She wasn't perfect but she succeeded at leaving a legacy far beyond the catalog of her music, and I think part of what shocks me most about her death is the number of people suddenly willing to criticize her life. People who didn't know her question the authenticity of her faith based on a quote they saw. People who can never quantify everything she did question her philanthropy based on a thing she didn't do, or they speculate on what she didn't have based on what she did have.

If Dolly can come under such criticism in a world where so much is ugly but she wasn't...well, it made me think about gratitude and appreciation, and the way things look when we focus on noticing the good in the world around us.

And I don't just mean the kind of thankfulness that hits us in the holiday season when lights are sparkly and food is rich and gifts are flowing. I mean the kind that catches you off guard in the moments when you look at your life and realize the things you once prayed for have become the things you take for granted.

I've seen a lot of talk lately in the writing world about authors choosing to eliminate "spice" in their books. For some, it's religious conviction, for others it's simply the realization that on-page sex scenes aren't always necessary, and for still others, it's the writer's passionate desire to follow the current market in order to sell books.

Someone asked me if, as a Christian, I plan to do the same. And the answer? No, I don't.

"But...don't you feel, you know, convicted? Like, writing that stuff? As a Christian?"

And again, the answer is no.

Because I'm not writing sex. I'm writing lives. I'm writing growth and reflection and the way circumstances draw us from one heart change to another. Maybe it's a woman who hates everything she's ever seen in the mirror, but she finds her way to the kind of confidence that allows her to be naked and vulnerable and brave all at the same time. Maybe it's a woman who knows what it is to be violated, but she's learning that pleasure does not have to be painful. Maybe it's a man illustrating the truth behind "not all men," simply by being different.

And maybe that's where Dolly and I—and all of us—have something in common. We all know what it feels like to be misunderstood, or to have something so incredibly important reduced to the one thing that's easy to pick apart. So often, we look at that one thing we don't understand or the choice we wouldn't have made (or the chapter we wouldn't have written), and suddenly that's the only thing we can see. And then we shake our heads and close our eyes to something that might have been beautiful.

Maybe we saw a quote we didn't like about someone supporting something we don't agree with, so we cheat ourselves of the chance to admire someone who gave their all to being kind. Maybe we know there's a one-page sex scene, so we cheat ourselves of finding joy and meaning in four hundred pages of everyday blessings meant to encourage and uplift and inspire.

I think that's why I'm so grateful for my readers. They're men and women from all ages and all walks of life. They believe different things, come from different backgrounds, and each one relates to stories differently—but regardless of labels and categories, the thing that brings them together as readers is their willingness to look for the part that feels like it was written just for them. The chapter that makes them see themselves with more compassion. The snippet of dialogue that teaches them something they weren't aware of before. And yes, sometimes even the paragraphs that draw them deeper than the skin revealed in a sex scene.

Because I may be a glow-in-the-dark white girl, but my kitchen is full of flavor and I want my books to be that way too. I want my characters to feel real and their stories to leave readers feeling seen. I hope every reader finishes the last page feeling grateful because something touched them, not because the story pretends that everything is good, but because it notices when not everything was bad.

Sometimes, whether it's in a book or not, gratitude is being able to look at a life that didn't quite go according to plan...and realizing that in the end, the lessons we learned were worth the chapters we lived through.

Besides, reality is too zesty to write without at least a little "spice."

*****

Sometimes gratitude comes from unexpected places. Maybe you find yours in make-up and rhinestones, like Dolly. Maybe you find it in stories that help you understand or express things you've struggled to appreciate before, like me. Most often though, I think we find it hidden in unexpected moments of personal reflection—those sudden flashes of recognition that spark so quickly they're easy to miss.

I'm not grateful for every hard thing I've lived through, and I'm not going to romanticize pain just because I've survived it. But I won't ignore it either, because what I am grateful for is what grew in the aftermath. I'm grateful for a teenager who notices the water on the bathroom counter at church, and takes the time to clean it up. I'm grateful for people who encourage my progress without wondering why I'm not "there" yet. I'm grateful for the secret blessings so precious I can't bring myself to share them, like hidden jewels kept in the privacy of my own heart.

And maybe that's the part we get wrong about gratitude. Maybe instead of struggling to look at everything we've been given and declaring it all as good, we just need to stop and recognize the good we've been given, regardless of where it came from. Because we don't need to sanitize life in order to be grateful for it, and the truth is, we don't have to list our blessings or try to outline everything that comes next. Maybe all it takes is a little mindfulness, a little hot coffee, a little nod to the ordinary blessings we usually overlook, and the willingness to...

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