I just finished reading Anne Lamott’s new book, Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers. Anne Lamott is one of my favorite writers, one of the best teachers, someone I adore because she shows up, as she is, and tells the truth. Honestly, I don’t always like what she has to say. It can make me uncomfortable and sad, but I know it’s the truth. She doesn’t try to make it pretty, she’s not attempting to craft a fussy literary moment, she’s not showing off, but simply is telling you how it is. This is the kind of writer, the kind of person I aspire to be.

In the section about “Thanks,” she says:

I admit, sometimes this position of gratitude can be a bit of a stretch. So many bad things happen in each of our lives. Who knew? When my son, Sam, was seven and discovered that he and I would probably not die at exactly the same moment, he began to weep and said, “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have agreed to be born.” This one truth, that the few people you adore will die, is plenty difficult to absorb…We are hurt beyond any reasonable chance of healing. We are haunted by our failures and mortality. And yet the world keeps on spinning, and in our grief, rage, and fear a few people keep on loving us and showing up. It’s all motion and stasis, change and stagnation. Awful stuff happens and beautiful stuff happens, and it’s all part the big picture.

In the face of everything, we slowly come through. We manage to make new constructs and baskets to hold what remains, and what has newly appeared. We come to know–to reconnect with–something rich and okay about ourselves. And at some point, we cast our eyes to the beautiful skies, above all the crap we’re wallowing in, and we whisper, “Thank you.”

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.