Tuesdays Child

Does everybody remember this nursery rhyme?

Mondays child is fair of face,

Tuesdays child is full of grace,

Wednesdays child is full of woe,

Thursdays child has far to go,

Fridays child is loving and giving,

Saturdays child works hard for his living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

I'm Tuesdays child, I think, somehow, I missed out on the grace part. Grace, either physical or spiritual, is not necessarily something that comes easy to me. Physical grace? My mastery of physical grace is laughable at best, that my house does not have a staircase, is a fact that strikes me as a graceful turn of events. I was raised in a home with a staircase and my managing to survive until adulthood is nothing short of miraculous. I shudder to think of how "graceful" I'd be if not for 10 or 12 years of dance classes. You know that teeny, weeny, tiny metal transition strip on many department store floors? Yeah? The one that's supposed to make the store safer? I've tripped over it...numerous times.

Grace is defined by Dictionary.com as

grace  –noun
1. elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.
2. a pleasing or attractive quality or endowment.
3. favor or good will.

Physically, "graceful" may be beyond my grasp (I'll settle on making it through any given day unscarred) but "elegance or beauty of manner" may be within it. I was seeking definition to a quality, I have before, called "finding the silver lining", when I encountered schmutzie's blog and her project Grace in small things, this paragraph of her's said everything I had been struggling to put into words...

"The world we live in is loud and harsh and bright and demanding, and it is easy to slide into a less than thoughtful survival mode in which we do what we have to do to make it through the day with the least amount of strife possible. This robs us of the time and energy to be mindful of ourselves and those we love and to recognize the grace that exists in small things.Read more: "Schmutzie.com: Grace In Small Things: A Challenge For All Of Us" - http://www.schmutzie.com/2008/11/grace-in-small-things.html#ixzz0AWZvDkNa

I find myself all too easily slipping into the negative, to dwelling on the "not so good" parts of life, forgetting or not even noticing all the wonderful, perfectly lovely, little bits of life that help make it bearable. Not just making life bearable...making my life delightful to me.

The Grace in Small Things challenge is to post 5 positive things in your life every day, its a challenge that has intrigued me for some time now, a challenge that I need, a challenge that I gratefully accept (Thanks Schmutzie)