I start every day with daily meditations.  My mother would call them prayers.  Hubs would probably call them wishes.  I like to call them meditations.  

Every morning I step into the shower and look at this beautiful window.  It has the perfect light pouring through it at about 10am.  I stretch my arms up to the ceiling and open my hands and say,

“Thank you for this day, thank you for this life.  May I always appreciate everything and everyone around me and never take them for granted. Please let me be open to all the great things this day has to offer.”

and then I begin my meditations.  They are the same every day. I add people to my list that I’d like the universe to watch over, that I want to focus some positive energy on.  I say them while I adjust the temperature of the water, while I wash my hair.  My thoughts wander sometimes and I have to bring myself back to my ‘bullet points,’ the big areas I like to concentrate on.  Then I move on to the ‘dashes’ the sub headings of my big meditations where I mull over things in more detail. Some days when I’m in a rush and know I only have a short time before my head is inevitably filled with other things, I just hit the big three:

I want them to be safe.

I want them to be healthy.

I want them to be happy.

I say these to myself a second time when I mentally pass into the section of meditations about my kids.  And I try to remember this: Everyone’s versions of these things may look completely different. And how wonderful that is. One day our children will bump up against other people’s versions of these three goals, and how they deal with understanding, accepting, or rejecting them will probably have a lot to do with how we raise our kids.

That brings me to the dashes:

I want them to be rational

I want them to be thoughtful

I want them to be creative

I want them to be balanced

And I have no idea what any of that looks like yet.  This is the stuff that keeps me up at night.  Well, that and my kids.  My kids keep me up all night.