Savor

I love words.  When I come across one I’m not familiar with, I like to look up the meaning and then see how it is used in a sentence.  Our children find it odd that both Mark and I have a dictionary app on our cell phones.  I don’t think there is a week that goes by that I don’t use it. 

I find it interesting how I can come across a word I’ve seen or heard many times and it strikes me differently.  Why is that, I wonder?  What about the word on that particular day caught my attention?  A word that I came across recently that caused me to pause and reflect is the word “savor.”

It seems “savor” is mostly associated with food.  When I looked up the word, it most often referred to flavor and smells.  But the last entry was the one that I was especially drawn to and caused me to be reflective, and that was “to delight in: enjoy.”

I started keeping a gratitude journal in July 2017.  At the time, I was reading a book titled One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  It is about her life and starting her own gratitude journal.  What I really appreciated was how simple her entries were.  They were not paragraph-long entries, but short descriptions of what she found to be thankful for each day.  

I pulled out a small, spiral bound notebook I had and started my own gratitude journal.  I kept it to one-line entries.  Some days I might only have one entry, and other days I could have four or five.  I numbered them with the same goal of reaching one thousand.  These days, I try to find at least five things each day that I have to be thankful for.  I like that at the end of the day, I reflect back and search for those things that meant the most to me.  And keeping each one to just a single line has helped keep me consistent in the practice.   As of today, I have over 7,000 entries.  That is a lot of gratitude!

You may be asking, “what does this have to do with the word savor?”  I’m getting there.  

I recently sat down with my two completed gratitude journals to review and remember.  It does bring back certain moments and experiences I have had.  There were entries like: open windows on a summer day; watching seven birds, wings fluttering in the bird bath; laughing until I cry; time with my family; and running errands with my daughter along.  

I can often remember what was going on that day which prompted a specific entry.  I have an entry of the last time I saw my mom before she passed.  A simple line – “our boy comes home!” was the day Adam came back from his summer exchange student program.  Another entry was just one word: Audrey!  I know from the date it was just a few days after my mom died and Audrey was there for me, helping me to handle whatever I needed to do.  

What I realized, however, was how often my entries involved people and nature.  Time spent with others, conversations via text or FaceTime, or even a brief encounter with a stranger.  Also noticed was seeing low lying fog over a field, a rainbow after a summer thunder storm, driving by a group of deer at sunset, or the simplicity of our little dog sitting on my lap.  

I realize that is what I savor most: connection.  Connection to people and nature.  When I have a positive, uplifting interaction with another person, it can take a normal, routine day and bring an unexpected burst of joy to it.  And nature often does the same thing.  Even now, in the midst of winter, when I see fresh snow on the bushes and trees, I recognize the beauty of that.  This morning, I saw a blue jay on a bare tree branch and it allowed me to slow down and appreciate the moment.  

I want my life to be full of more moments like these, connections that I savor, that bring me joy. 

What is it that you savor most?