Look For It

Today was not a good day. There was too much dissonance and not enough calm. I retired to my room as soon as the children were put down to sleep, utterly defeated and ready to read myself into a restless sleep. I picked up a magazine from my bedside table and opened it to find this poem staring up at me. What a beautiful and sobering reminder that no matter how hopeless it seems, there is peace to be found in the simple, everyday acts of living. Tomorrow, I promise to look for it...

I Have Found Such Joy

I have found such joy in simple things;
A plain, clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread,
A cup of milk, a kettle as it sings,
The shelter of a roof above my head.
And in a leaf-laced square along the floor,
Where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.
I have found such joy in things that fill
My quiet days: a curtain's blowing grace,
A potted plant upon my windowsill,
A rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase; A table cleared, a lamp beside a chair,
And books I long have loved beside me there.
Oh, I have found such joys I wish I might
Tell every woman who goes seeking far
For some elusive, feverish delight,
That very close to home the great joys are:
The elemental things--old as the race,
Yet never, through the ages, commonplace.

--Grace Noll Crowell