How are you?

Quote I saw on pinterest

What a question. I find myself sometimes paralyzed by the amount of things I could say. The truth is, I'm always a lot of things. I'm feeling a bunch of different feelings at any given point. I'm feeling grateful for the rain since our state is in a drought. I'm also, if I'm being honest, feeling borderline depressed at times when I look outside to the gray, dreary, wet world, thinking about how quite soon, I'll need to exit my big comfy couch with warm coffee to join it. I'm also feeling anxious about driving in it, and all the possible dangers that entails. How do I answer that question? Do I quickly calculate a "net feeling" in my brain? Do I create a pie chart of percentages for how much I'm feeling which emotion?

I saw the quote above (finally jumped on the pinterest train rabbit hole) and noticed myself getting defensive - "shouldn't you be honest and answer truthfully when someone asks how you are?" Then the more I thought, the more I recognized that there is never a time I'm feeling absolutely 100% down in the dumps. Of course, I have moments where that can be up to 99% of how I'm feeling, in which case I may still choose to answer "I'm feeling awful," but what I realized is that I always have a choice because I always have a feeling - no matter how small - of gratitude inside me. As long as I am alive, I have waking up to be grateful for each day, and the ability to focus on and express that truth.

Thanks to God and the gift of waking up each morning, I can always choose to answer that question in a way that talks about my joys. What a joy it is to be alive.