Other People's Blessings

Dear Love and Laundry Readers,

Maybe you’ve experienced this. You have your heart set on this one really specific thing. You want it desperately. You would literally cut off your right arm if you could only have this one thing.

And then you actually get it.

You are blissfully happy. You are the luckiest person in the world. You are blessed. You are joyful. You are content.

For awhile.

And then a few weeks, or months or years later, this thing you wanted so desperately isn’t quite enough. You want...something more.

For example, maybe you want—no, you need—a bigger house with a better yard and more bedrooms for the kids. So you move. And for a while it’s great. But it turns out those kitchen cabinets in your new house are actually quite old. Wouldn’t it be better to have the kind of drawers that pull out? And an island? And double wall ovens?

So you renovate the kitchen. And it’s fantastic. Nothing falls on your head when you reach into the new pantry for a can of soup. You are happy. You are content.

But now the rest of the house looks shabby compared to your beautiful new kitchen. That old bathtub-shower combo is really irksome. You want one of those walk-in showers with a glass door. Obviously you need to renovate the bathroom, too.

But after you renovate the bathroom you realize you can’t sit on your deck in the morning after it rains and enjoy a cup of coffee because the furniture is wet. Clearly, you need a screened-in porch, plus some trees and landscaping. And maybe a pool would be nice too, as long as you’re doing the landscaping.

And so it goes, forever and ever until we run out of money, die, or become the kind of spiritual, enlightened people who never watch HGTV or look at houses on Pinterest.

I call it Creeping Discontent and it can strike suddenly, like spring allergies. That’s what happened to me recently.

I was just going about my business, happy to be a finally be a published author. When Friends with Secrets came out, I thought I’d never want anything ever again. I was joyful. I was grateful, deep in my soul. I was content.

Best of all, having a book in the world brought me to new events and new places like book festivals, writing conferences, and panel discussions. It brought me wonderful new writing friends.

Then I started looking around. And I noticed that other people have things that I don’t have.

Like film agents. European book tours. Novels sold at auction in bidding wars. Deals with Hollywood studios to have their books adapted for film and television.

I should point out here that Creeping Discontent is not the same as jealousy. I am not jealous of skinny people who exercise all the time and deny themselves dessert, for example, because they work really hard at being skinny (something I am clearly unwilling to do).

So I can honestly say that I am happy for the friends who have the things I don’t have because they worked really hard for a very long time to get these things. And they are also incredibly talented. So Creeping Discontent it isn’t jealousy, or even envy.

It’s more like being happy to have a vanilla ice cream cone because you thought ice cream only came in vanilla, but you now realize that mint-chocolate chip, strawberry, and fudge ripple are also options.

And now you really want fudge ripple, too.

Creeping Discontent is wanting more than you already have instead of resting in gratitude with the things you’ve been given.

If handled responsibly, this can be good. Scientists think Creeping Discontent might be the human trait that caused homo sapiens to leave the savannah, cross the land bridge and populate the earth.

Instead of being happy sleeping on the ground next to a perfectly good watering hole and eating berries, someone realized that those people over there had caves and loin cloths, plus fire. And who doesn’t want fire? So they figured out how to get it.

Creeping Discontent can spur us to greater heights, make us work harder. Some people might say it’s good to want more.

But I’d rather learn how to be happy with enough. Because I actually have enough. More than enough. I think most of us do. And I think the internet and social media are working overtime every single day to make us forget this.

Many years ago at a romance writer’s luncheon, I sat next to a legendary writer named Beverly Jenkins. And she told me something I’ve never forgotten. She said, “No one is entitled to someone else’s blessings.”

I think about that a lot.

When my head is screwed on straight, I recognize that I always get the blessings I need at the moment I most need them. I believe a loving creator is running the show, and this benevolent power apportions out blessings according to our situation. And right now, a TV deal is a blessing with someone else’s name on the tag. It’s not meant for me right now.

Maybe it will be later. Maybe it won’t. Because if I don’t get a particular blessing, it’s because I don’t need it. And maybe that’s because I got something else instead, like an unremarkable mammogram or healthy kids or a spouse who makes me laugh. And maybe there’s a wonderful blessing in my future, like a seven-studio bidding war for my next book and a winning lottery ticket. Who knows?

Sometimes it seems like the blessings aren’t ladled out evenly. Some people seem to get second or even third helpings in the blessing cafeteria, plus free dessert and an extra glass of milk, like movie stars who are beautiful and rich and successful and have a loving spouse and a swimming pool and who are always described by an anonymous friend in People Magazine as being “in a really good place right now, emotionally and spiritually.”

Why can’t the rest of us have that, too?

I don’t know. In my case, I suspect it’s because I couldn’t handle all that with anything resembling humility. I’d walk around in an I Just Won An Oscar t-shirt and hit innocent bystanders in the eye with my luxuriant hair, which I would fling nonchalantly over my shoulder while buying Gucci purses and cloning my dog.

I think my benevolent creator knows it’s best for me (and for the world at large) if I do not have some of these things because I couldn’t handle them. Beauty and fabulous riches would make me a worse person.

It’s kind of like the magnet my mother had on our fridge when I was growing up. It said, “Some luck lies in not getting what we want, but in getting what have, which is what we would have wanted in the first place, had we known.”

That pretty much sums it up. I’m lucky to have what I have, which is everything I could possibly need. Some days I’m smart enough to know this.

And sometimes I forget. Which is why I am writing about this. Because writing helps me remember the important things when I spend too much time on the internet and too much time reading the news, things like gratitude for this newsletter and the kind people who read it, my health and my family, and my really cute dog. Plus a book coming out in June and another next year, which is the gravy on top of the mashed potatoes of a good life.

And perhaps someday I will peruse multiple film and tv offers while I sit beside my swimming pool being skinny with luxuriant hair and a cloned dog.

Until then however, I’m finishing up Book #3, doing podcasts interviews and other promotional things to prepare for the launch of Behind White Picket Fences on June 9, hiding Easter eggs in the backyard for “kids” who are now in high school and college, but who still love chocolate, finishing up a wonderful trip to California to see my in-laws, and getting ready for the Women’s Fiction Writer’s conference here in Alexandria at the end of April.

A good, full life, even without a Netflix-Paramount bidding war. May you spend the month of April being happy with your own good life as the flowers bloom and spring returns.

Much love,

Christine

Don’t forget to preorder your copy of Behind White Picket Fences!

You can check it out HERE.