I’m delighted to welcome my friend, Allison Byxbe, to be here with us today ~
Allison invited me to share in a conversation about the Gift of Delight for her Inky Collective this month. I was delighted to do this! We had a fun and dare I say, delightful conversation? π
Let’s jump back for a moment, so I can introduce you to her Inky Collective. It’s a beautiful community she’s formed for people and paper and pens. Each month she finds a theme to settle in with. Allison shares journaling prompts each week, a brief podcast midweek and a Friday Finds ~ lovely journaling ideas or products from around the web.
“The Inky Collective is a simple space created to get you journaling. A place to exhale deeply, trace the grace of your one sacred life, and connect through community and creativity. Each week you’ll have access to a brand new journaling prompt, along with podcast episodes that I host, and links to other journaling resources, as well as exclusive member savings and giveaways just for members. When you join, you have immediate access to everything posted in 2023!” ~ Allison
Allison sent me a few questions prior to our discussion and then I asked her to answer them for us. Today, I’m sharing her answers to the questions along with my answers in condensed written form. And if you’d like to link arms with us and listen to the whole of the conversation, chat, and discussion, {albeit, all my fumbles and rabbit trails and processing out loud π } you can find it right here by joining The Inky Collective. It’s the price of a fancy coffee… π {Plus, you’ll have access to all the prompts and content from this year.}
On to our questions and responses…….and should you desire to take time to respond to the questions with your own answers, musings, and ponderings, I’d be delighted if you wanted to share and send them my way via comments or email!
Questions and Responses with Allison
What are you delighting in these days?
- I am delighting in having two Christmas trees in my home, a taller, fuller one in my living room with white twinkling lights and all of our assorted family ornaments. Then there’s a smaller Christmas tree in our dining room window, with multicolored lights, and our advent ornaments, situated so people passing by can see the tree’s lights.
- Iβm delighting in our new espresso machine because my husband makes me a latte every morning.
- And, Iβm delighting in my children, watching who they are becoming unfolding right before me.
How is delight a gift?
- Delight is a gift that startles us awake, a moment of intense pleasure as we are awed by something we experience. One definition I came across described delight as a βlighthearted sense of pure, uncomplicated pleasure.β When many things around us feel heavy and complex, delight certainly feels like a gift, a small thing to treasure amid great difficulty. Like you said in our conversation, Deborah, all delight requires is noticing good things around us. And, as I think more about the definition of delight, which children seem to be naturally good at, I think of Jesusβ call in Matthew 18 for us to βbecome like little children.β
How do you hold delight even in the face of less delightful things, even flat-out hard things?
- When certain outlooks or postures seem hard to hold, I like to imagine them tangibly. For example, thinking of delight, I might close my eyes, deepen my breaths, and imagine holding a small, wrapped box with a red bow tied around it. I imagine holding it in my hands, anticipating what it might be in the small box. In my mind, I take time to really take the box in, how it looks and feels: I turn the box, run my fingers across the texture of the wrapping paper, I hold the box up to the light to see it from a new angle. And then I imagine myself slowly pulling the bow’s tail until it gives way and then sliding my finger under the tape, holding the wrapping paper down, gently tugging the paper away from the box, lifting the lidβ¦and then I imagine what might be in the box. Whatever comes to mind in this imaginative exercise, I pull out of the box and begin to take it in, much like I did the box when it was still beautifully wrapped. I find that this imaginative exercise helps me call to mind what itβs like to experience delight, and this helps me both experience delight in this moment and look for other delightful moments as I go about my day. If imagining a fictitious moment like Iβve described doesnβt resonate, perhaps recalling a previous moment of real delight can help, tooβso sit quietly, deepen your breath, and bring to mind that past moment and hold it in your mind as you explore the sensory aspects of that memory.
This month in Inky, weβre journaling about gifts. What gifts have brought you delight?
- About a month ago, my husband gave me a new pair of earrings for no specific reason at all. To know that he was thinking about me just because was so delightful.
- For my 40th birthday (almost) two years ago, some extended family and friends all took a birthday trip with me to Floridaβ20 of us (adults + kids) shared a big Airbnb and went to Disney World for a day. That 20-something people would agree to celebrate my birthday that way? I felt so delightfully loved.
- A few months ago, one of my dearest friends gifted me a refillable leather journal that I absolutely adore. Every time I pull it out (almost daily), I think of the gift of that friendship, and I also love to journal.
What is a journaling prompt that brings you delight?
- One of my favorite journaling prompts is called a List of 100.
Three rules: Write quickly in simple words and short phrases, make the whole list in 1 sitting, and itβs okay to repeat words throughout your list. So, write a list of 100 things that bring you delight!
Questions and Responses with Deborah
What are you delighting in these days?
- Flickering candles and cozy evenings along with hot apple spice tea. Reading books or watching a movie. Twinkle lights and soft lamplight.
- I put my Christmas tree up in November. I usually do it after Thanksgiving. This was the first time I’ve had it up this early and I have loved it. It has felt so much less rushed. I have been keeping a Christmas bouquet of flowers on my coffee table and it makes me happy every time I look at it.
How is delight a gift?
- I believe delight is perhaps the glitter or the confetti cast on an ordinary day. It adds extra even to the extraordinary. Perhaps we’re savoring a beautiful sunset, gazing at a crimson poinsettia, laughing at the antics of a fluffy ginger kitten. Delight takes these moments and intensifies them in the happiest of ways.
- The gift of delight scatters happiness when we pause to fully notice. Pause to be where our feet are. Bask in the joy and profound delight these simple things bring us. We open the gift of delight by noticing the beauty and the details in our days. By naming the miraculous grace that we get to experience this. We get to behold the wonder.
How do you hold delight even in the face of less delightful things, even flat out hard things?
- The honest answer is I don’t. Not always. Part of the reason I seek delight is because it is a way to combat the hard places and the hurt. It pushes back against the darkness. I do believe it is worth fighting for and it is worth seeking the delight even when we would rather not. Yet, even in that belief and even in knowing that, I still don’t always do it the best.
I seek delight because I need it.
When life is heaving, sometimes simply noticing one small pinpoint of delight helps steady me.
What gifts have brought you delight?
- My outdoor sink ~ combination of the gift of my husband’s time and the reminder of our old house where the sink came from. It was my kitchen sink. A double sink made of old enamel or porcelain. I’d seen the idea of an outside sink and when we moved out of our very old farmhouse, we saved the kitchen sink with the idea of turning it into an outside sink. A few years later my husband did just that and it brings me so much happiness and delight.
- My Qwerky keyboard, was gifted to me by my mother last year for Christmas ~ I love the tactile and sensory feel of it, the beauty it brings to my desk, and the sound the keys make as I click-clack across them.
- A little collection of artwork drawn by and given by a few friends and family members.
- Three beeswax evergreen candles my niece gave me for Christmas a few years ago.
Share a journaling prompt about the gift of delight.
- What color would you picture delight to be?
- Make a list: What brings you delight? What is delightful to you?
- What causes you utmost delight?
- When in your life have you felt most alive – most like dancing for sheer joy – most delighted?
