The other day I was on Twitter (shut up, it was work related) and I noticed that a friend’s Twitterscope happened to also be my Twitterscope. It said:

You shift from being okay to not okay and back in just a few minutes. Although this may be confusing to you, it can be truly disconcerting to others. Consequently, it’s smart to keep your mood swings to yourself until they settle down. Be patient; you will gain clarity in the days ahead.

To which I said, Screw you, Twitterscope. It’s not about me. I never knew what I was walking into – a love fest or a hornet’s nest.

This horoscope advice from the planets came on the heels of my own realization that things were topsy turvy in a particular area of my life. One minute I was doing everything right. The next minute I was doing everything wrong. My moodswings? I don’t think so.

As luck would have it, every time things were going badly I’d come home and the kids would be louder/messier/slower/stickier than usual because they can tell when I’m at my wit’s end.

That’s when they put grape jelly in their hair. To make sure my love is truly unconditional.

Because I do love them unconditionally, I try to practice a little of the horoscope advice. I focus on the “be patient” part.

I can do that much. Doing the be patient part helps me realize they don’t just get jelly in their hair because I’m stressed out. Things like jelly happen all the time, but when my head needs help it throws my game.

When my head is okay, I get out the hose and am done with it. So it’s not that they’re being less loud/messy/slow/sticky normally. It’s that it doesn’t always affect me. I don’t make it part of my experience. It looks like I go from okay to not okay and back because of what the people around me are doing, when really it’s how I am handling my interpretation of what they’re doing.

It’s always an inside job.

If it’s true of my jelly-crusted children, it’s true of the hornet’s nest. I can’t control the actions of others, but I have every right to not make them part of my own reality.

The Dalai Lama, who totally knows about such things, said “When our minds are clouded by hatred, selfishness, jealousy, and anger, we lose not only control but also our judgment.”

It’s funny, isn’t it, that the wanting to be in control is what actually makes us lose control?

Be patient and you will gain clarity. Fight it and you just make it more real. It’s true on the mat and it’s true in life.

Isn’t it great that we have so many many many chances to practice this every single day?

If you focus on what’s not working or get angry with yourself, your kids, your breakfast drink, whatever, then that’s what becomes more real and that’s where your day goes. If you can let go, you can be right where you want to be.

As I was writing this, three kids spilled three glasses of chocolate milk. It was like some kind of test. Because I was writing this and I didn’t want you to see what a hypocrite I am, I handled all three spills with patience.

It seemed like good practice for when the hornets start buzzing again. Maybe I’ll learn that even the hornets are just a bunch of big kids with bad hand-eye coordination. Maybe I’ll realize that their loudest buzzing is about needing unconditional love, and it’s not directed at me at all.

Maybe, when that promised clarity comes, I can get this jelly out of my hair – and resume my love affair with Twitter.

This column was originally published in The Magazine of Yoga. Reprinted with gratitude.

Thanksgiving was not always my favorite holiday.

Growing up, I thought Thanksgiving was about radishes cut like roses and juice glasses rimmed in confectioner sugar. It was a high-tension affair so full of aesthetic requirements we could barely see the pumpkin pie at the end of the tunnel – which is a shame because my mom does indeed make the world’s best pumpkin pie.

After three decades of tense perfection, I married into a family who ran a soup-kitchen style Thanksgiving.

Nothing was decanted into serving dishes and brought to a linen, crystal and silver bedecked table (did I mention there were only four of us, growing up?). Dishes were served up in my mother-in-law’s kitchen and guests – as many as felt like coming – found a seat on the couch.

Everyone wore stretchy pants instead of Sunday finery.

For years I thrived in the soup kitchen of my new family. And then one day I began to crave the dignity of my own family traditions.

What I had seen as empty and tension-fraught displays were actually beautiful expressions of gratitude.

Thanksgiving affords an opportunity to take the process of preparing, serving and eating out of the commonplace. On Thanksgiving we treat our guests to the best we have.

When we garnish a plate, we don’t do it to be better or fancier or to make more work for ourselves – we do it as a gesture of love and respect. It is an offering. When’s the last time you saw a Styrofoam take-out container at an altar?

When I say we give the best of what we have, I do not mean crystal glasses and silver serving dishes (although if you have them, this is the time).

My mother-in-law opened her home to everyone she knew. Her best was a generous heart and a large collection of forks.

When we iron our impossibly long linen table cloths and polish our impossibly black silver candlesticks, we do it in the spirit of gratitude, not tedious obligation. The process of preparation is like a prayer – in which radish rosettes are rosary beads.

When ritual loses its fundamental meaning and becomes a series of things we do, the prayer part goes missing, taking the blessing with it.

“Thanksgiving” is an in-and-out kind of word. It inhales thanks and exhales giving. It can’t only do one, or it will pass out in the turnips.

Here’s my secret recipe for Thanksgiving: I invite no one who is likely to judge me.

If my napkins are not perfectly pressed, my guests are not apt to care. I invite my family because I love them, and I invite friends because I love them too. If friends are away from family or have no tradition of their own, they have a place at my table.

I shine up the best of what I have, make my favorite recipes and lay it all out like an offering.

Thanksgiving is every day. On this one Thursday, however, we pull out all the stops. We give thanks for what we have and honor the people in our lives. It is not an obligation, it is a gift. And we do it with joy in our hearts and, in a perfect world, mom’s pumpkin pie in our bellies.

May your Thanksgiving be blessed. May your table be full. May your heart be satisfied.

Happy Thanksgiving.

There’s a Bible story about a man who was sitting at the Pool of Bethesda, waiting for the spirit to move the waters so he could jump in and be healed.

Jesus sees this guy and says “wilt thou be made whole?” And the guy says, “There’s no one here who will help me get in the pool first and, doggone it,  someone else always jumps in first.”

Which did not answer the question.

I have to admit, I’d probably do the same thing.

For instance, if someone (including but not limited to Jesus) walked up right now and said, “wouldn’t you prefer a kitchen that works?” I would most likely rattle off all the reasons we can’t do a kitchen remodel right now and then I’d go into great detail about all the things that are wrong with our kitchen and the next thing you know, I’d be on that very kitchen floor, weeping inconsolably.

I can’t remodel our kitchen because there are eleven hundred external factors standing between me and new cupboards – factors I have no control over. I don’t do anything because all these other things have to align first and… does anyone see them aligning? No.

What it boils down to is an external versus an internal thing. There’s a lot out there we can’t control. Let external factors dictate your life and you’re toast.

It’s also a will versus want thing.

I have trouble paraphrasing “wilt thou be made whole” because we don’t use “wilt” except for lettuce these days.

In our modern language, we say “want,” which does not necessarily mean what we think it means.

If you look it up, definitions include “to be needy or destitute,” “to feel the absence of,” “to suffer from  lack,” etc. So if you say “do you want a functioning kitchen” I hear “do you feel the absence of a functioning kitchen?”

Which, please, have you seen my kitchen? Blech. You bet I feel it. And here are my excuses for why it will stay that way.

According to the Free Dictionary, will  is defined:
The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action.

When we deliberately choose a course of action, we relinquish hopelessness. We decide it will be better.

We do things, little things, to make it better. We clean hinges so the cupboards close. We discard unused kitchen tools. We are no longer paralyzed, waiting by the Pool of Bethesda.

I haven’t actually done this with my kitchen yet.

I figured I’d try it out on you first.

I started thinking about this a couple years ago as I lay in a heap on my living room floor, observing a crack in the ceiling.

It didn’t make sense to fix the crack and paint the ceiling because it would happen again when the roof leaked again. We couldn’t fix the roof because… honestly I don’t remember why we couldn’t fix the roof.

I was so frustrated and disheartened. I knew I had to think differently about my home.

I wanted my home to be whole. I decided my home would be whole.

I began doing things, little things, toward this goal. The little things snowballed and became big things. Despite whatever our insurmountable reasons were, we did eventually fix the roof. Little by little, our home has been made whole (with a few glaring exceptions).

There are so many things we can apply this to – and when I say we, I mean my family. You can apply it too, of course.

Will you, your home, your career, your relationship be made whole?

Answer the question. No excuses.