How is everyone doing out there in Main Street Land?
You know me well enough by now, and don’t hold it against me, that I limped off the field at midnight on election night and went to bed, waving my white flag as the election results rolled in.
I tried to grow quiet, calm down, focus on my blessings, and get some sleep.
The problem was Wednesday, when I went about the day feeling heavy, even though I hadn’t gained weight.
Pollyanna that I am, I found myself remembering wonderful scenes from the 1960 Walt Disney movie Pollyanna, starring Hayley Mills.
Perhaps you remember it, too.
Pollyanna finds herself in the home of Mr. Pendergast, a rather disagreeable old gentleman who has surrounded himself with beautiful things but seems to have forgotten how to enjoy them.
Among his possessions are glass crystals hanging from a lamp. When sunlight passes through them, little rainbows dance across the walls.
Pollyanna is enchanted.
Mr. Pendergast explains that the crystals are prisms, separating the sunlight into its beautiful colors. He is not nearly as impressed as Pollyanna, reminding her that when the sun goes down, the rainbows will disappear.
But Pollyanna knows something he has forgotten. The sun will come back tomorrow, and so will the rainbows.
Later, visiting Mrs. Snow, a thoroughly unhappy woman who has taken to her bed, Pollyanna notices similar crystals hanging from a lamp.
Before long, the two are stringing the crystals across the bedroom window, and sunlight is scattering rainbows around a room that has known very little happiness.
Mrs. Snow, who could find something wrong with almost anything, begins to take an interest in life again.
And Mr. Pendergast, encouraged by Pollyanna and her young friend Jimmy Bean, eventually has a window full of prisms himself.
I love this story.
I have been thinking about those crystals all day.
The prisms do not create the sunlight. They simply catch the light that is already there and reveal colors we might otherwise never see.
Wednesday morning, I could have used a window full of them.
There is something rather comforting about remembering that disappointment does not remove the blessings from our lives. The people we love are still there. The places we care about still matter. The work we believe in still needs doing.
And I suppose that is what Pollyanna would remind me, if she were sitting here beside me, watching me nurse my election-night wounds.
The Glad Game was never a promise that everything would turn out the way we wanted.
It was a way of remembering that even when things go wrong, there is still something to be glad about.
I may have limped off the field Tuesday night, but I have faith I can recover. I am having trouble locating my crystals, but when I find them, I intend to hang every last one in a sunny window.
