It was a bad time for a Wisconsin blizzard or for strep throat, but it was the worst time to have them both. I couldn’t have been sicker, and we couldn’t have been more snowed in. There was no chance of getting me out of the driveway, let alone 20 miles on drifted-over roads from our tiny town to the nearest doctor. Twelve-year-old me was too sick to stay in my basement bedroom, so my parents moved me into their bedroom. Every swallow was agony. Knives, fire, acid, somehow all at once. Days melted together, and the snow kept howling. I cried over every swallow. At some point I overheard my mom arguing with our doctor on the phone--”I’ve raised five kids. I think I know what strep looks like… Yes. Yes. Yes. No, we can’t come in for a strep test. We can’t get the car out and none of the roads in town are plowed… Long pause…Yes, we’ll find a way to get to the drugstore in town. Thank you for trusting me.”

Thanks to my father’s heroic, mile-long trek on foot to the drugstore through bitter winds and hip-high drifts and the pharmacist’s cross-country skiing skills to get to work, I had antibiotics. As the medicine slowly began to work its magic, I vowed in my delirium, “I will never take swallowing for granted again.” But, dear reader, before the snow stopped falling, she would indeed take her swallowing for granted.

Isn’t that the way it always is, though? We get injured and we are aware of the pain--moving more gingerly to avoid making it worse, but always aware, until the pain and the awareness slip away. We hardly notice when our bodies make the change to feeling better.

Some of you may remember when we had a speaker come to Imago and spread red sand in the cracks of all our sidewalks. Until the red was added, I had never noticed the cracks. The sand brought awareness to what was already there, but as the wind and rain came, the sand disappeared and so did my attention to the cracks. Sometimes awareness can be foisted upon us, but awareness in that sense is hard for me to maintain. What I need are different ways to keep me in a state of awareness using things that are around me already. Things which require little effort to see. Maybe you could use that too.

Years ago, Joni Eareckson-Tada said that she attached her awareness to butterflies. Every time she saw a butterfly, it would remind her that God saw her and was with her. She continues to see butterflies everywhere--even when she shouldn’t. Inside hotels, in the dead of winter, in artwork. Butterflies delight her and encourage her. I decided years ago that cumulonimbus cloud formations would be my awareness trigger. Whenever I see them, I remember that I am loved and held by God. Am I any less loved or held by God when the skies are clear? No, but I am specifically reminded of it when I see those spectacular clouds.

A friend sets a timer on his phone to go off every day to remind him to give thanks for three things--specifically, whatever is around him at that very moment. Is that less organic than looking for butterflies or clouds? For him, it’s not. The end result is that he is cultivating a practice of awareness and gratitude.

The Earleson family has adopted a tradition of choosing a color for a season. They spend that time looking for and noticing where they see their color. This time, I think their color is turquoise, so they are constantly looking for turquoise things. It’s like a joy treasure hunt! I love that! Turquoise everywhere! Another thing I’ve heard from some Imago people is to stop and express gratitude whenever you see a yellow car. Other people choose a word for the year that helps them focus on their goals, and then suddenly that word pops up everywhere in conversation or in print.

That’s one of the side benefits of selecting something concrete to trigger your awareness, your gratitude, your reminder of belovedness, your goals--you start seeing it everywhere. There’s actually a scientific name for this: the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or Frequency Illusion. This is where you notice something and then you start seeing that thing everywhere, even though there has not been an increase in the number of items you are noticing. Selective attention plus confirmation bias make you think that there are more now than there ever have been before. Usually, this is false. The only thing that has changed is your awareness or attunement to the thing. But isn’t that beautiful? You’re becoming attuned to the world around you, exactly as it is.

Does it matter that you are on the lookout for butterflies, vibrant colors, big puffy clouds, or specific words? Not really. Everyone can see those things. It’s the attention, the awareness, the grounding that you attach to that item that matters. It’s the noticing, the connecting, the letting-it-change-you-ness that can make all the difference.

I would love to hear how you invite awareness into your life. I’ll be out in the garden looking for butterflies in the turquoise sky filled with the biggest puffy clouds you’ve ever seen. You are so, so loved, Imago. I hope you can see it.

Awareness by Laura Holmes