My parents took my son and me out for Chinese food last weekend. The dinner was delicious, but my meal-ending fortune cookie was bossy and a bit rude. I cracked it open to read, “Opportunities await. Work harder.” 

Like a good Calvinist, I pride myself on being a hard worker. But that fortune cookie did not taste good. It made me feel accused and defensive. 

Partially because I was sitting next to my parents: apple growers in the middle of their busy fall season who, at nearly 70 years old, still run an entire orchard on their own. In the fall, they work 14-hour days picking apples, sorting apples, making apple-flavored donuts, pressing cider, and helping customers. 

I also felt defensive because my 13-year-old son, who asks a million questions but also already has answers to every single one of them, said something like, “Yeah, Mom, what do you do all day?” Rest assured, dear reader, I did not take his bait. I stayed (mostly) calm. It helped that his grandparents were watching. 

Productivity is a trait I inherited from my beloved parents. I like making lists, checking things off,  and having something to show for myself at the end of the day.

However, unlike my parents, my work rarely yields a literal harvest. I’m a writer, an educator, and a parent. I make a living out of planting seeds, many of which I’m still hoping and praying might someday come to fruition. 

And in the writing department, I oscillate between inspiration and despair. Feeling full of good ideas one moment and then convinced they are all worthless the next. 

I know I’m in good company because nearly every writer I’ve ever talked with or read about describes the same feeling. In Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, my personal patron Saint, Anne Lamott writes: 

I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said that you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

When I get stuck with my writing, I’ve found that making lists can get me unstuck. Because though the task has a format of productivity, its expansiveness liberates me. There is something about relinquishing the pressure of perfect sentences for a series of bullet points.

In a student workshop I led last spring, I introduced a writing exercise called “12 Things” and invited the students to write alongside me. I asked them to:

 Create lists of 12 things that define you. The possibilities are endless but could include: 12 life events, 12 songs, 12 movies, 12 books, 12 foods, 12 things you’ve lost, 12 things you’ve found, 12 places you’ve been, 12 places you can’t go back to, 12 memories from elementary school, 12 memorable meals, 12 things that make you happy, 12 rules you’ve broken, 12 things you were told over and over growing up.

If you’re a writer, or even if you don’t think of yourself as one, you might take a few minutes today to craft some lists of 12. It’s amazing where our minds can go when we unleash them, what memories they trudge up and weave together.

Another journal prompt recently urged me to write about beds I’ve slept in throughout my life, so I remembered 12: 

• A crib I don’t remember.
• A double bed, I shared with my sister (14 months younger than me) all of our growing-up years. My mom said I was lucky to share a bed with only one sister because she grew up sharing a bed with two, and my dad tucked us in nightly and said our prayers, often collapsing on the bed and then dozing off between us. 
• Sleepovers at my “city” Grandparents’ house on the couch. They really lived in the suburbs, but we were country kids enamored by the sidewalks and stoplights. At night, trains rumbled by, shaking the house and jolting me awake with their whistles.
• Three weeks on the ground in a tent, Out West on a high school summer science trip. Maybe it’s the blur of nostalgia, but it was one of those times I truly stood where my feet were—awake to how good and fleeting those days were, even as I lived them.
• A college dorm loft: Abercrombie ads plastered to the walls, assignments I was procrastinating strewn across my desk, late nights falling asleep mid-conversation with roommates.
• A bunk at a summer camp in Colorado, where I was a counselor. I prayed nightly for the gift of sound sleep—for the campers and for me. Six weeks with the youngest campers, 9- and 10-year-olds. Most of them, homesick.
• The basement bedroom in Switzerland, inside the house where I worked as an au pair. Now I was the homesick one. Reading Psalms at night and begging God for peace, comfort. 
• Hostels in Europe: Sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone. Sometimes my own private room, sometimes a communal space with strangers. Other 20-somethings from around the world. The chatter of different languages, a jumble of fear and independence. 
• The condo my husband and I bought when we were newlyweds. A hand-me-down bed from his grandma, a haphazard collection of plastic souvenir cups from his bachelor days, and a set of Waterford Crystal goblets we tried to trade for silverware—until the appalled saleswoman scolded us: “This is meant to be something special.” We bought cheap silverware, brought the crystal home, and poured even cheaper beer in it. Twenty-three years later, only one goblet is broken.
• An ice hotel in Quebec City, where even my bed was carved from ice. I was on assignment as a journalist for Group Tour Magazine during my short stint as a travel writer before I traded a cubicle for a classroom. They told me I wouldn’t be cold. I was freezing. 
• The house on Lexington Court, where we had our babies. Little boys bouncing on a hand-me-down bed. A rickety porch replaced after stitches in the oldest’s forehead. A glass slider we watched through as the middle son cried, locked in, poured cereal on the floor—until my husband climbed through the second-story window.
• Our current house, the one we bought from my husband’s parents, though that was never part of the original plan, and the decision surprised even us. The sunrise view from my bedroom window, the back porch overlooking the old muck onion fields where they now grow turf grass. We no longer tuck our boys in; instead, they pause in our doorway to wish us goodnight.

Maybe that fortune cookie was half right: opportunities do await. Our days are numbered, and though the world is broken, goodness remains.

But I’m not sure it’s about working harder. It’s being open to goodness. It’s about paying attention. Not being too busy to slow down and recognize it, search for it, and receive it. And as often as we can, trading the allure of productivity for the luxury of grace.

Header Fortune cookie photo by Tuccera LLC on Unsplash
Checklist photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash