Friday, October 17, 2014

Working to Choose Gratefulness

It has been a week of annoyances. I have been stressed about running our household by myself because Frank was out of town from Monday morning until last night. I had too many extra commitments and not enough down-time for my liking. I pulled something in my shoulder, and have had on and off stomach problems all week, which have impacted my running workouts. And there is still the ever-present stress of the flooded house, which is still going on and, I believe, will be going on until the end of time. Toss this all together and cover it with grief-sauce and you get an idea of how my week has been.

I've been stressed, bummed out, sad, disheartened, crabby, and just plain sick of it all.

I'm really, really grateful for these people!
This morning my internal dialogue was set to "extreme crabbiness".  I did a not-so-great workout and then sat down to find a recipe for Shepherd's Pie.  I went looking on a website called Southern Plate that Sue had sent to me a few years ago in an attempt to get me to make her some pumpkin cupcakes (it worked, I made them for her, they were good too!)

I found a recipe for Shepherd's Pie, but when I started poking around her site, I found that her blog post for today was about gratefulness.  That stopped me in my tracks because I have been stuck in a mode all week that hasn't left room for any gratefulness.  In other words, I've been poor-meing it for days.

Her post begins like this:

We often lose sight of the incredible blessings we have because the small hitches and drawbacks of life tend to overshadow them in the daily requirement to deal with them. (When we have a problem we must address over and over, we can’t help but keep it at the forefront of our thoughts.)

That is why it is important to actively call out our blessings each day. To pull them from the back of our minds, from that area we don’t think about because it hums steadily along without much need for attention.

(you can read the rest of her post here)


I felt like she had posted this for me today, like she was very nicely pointing out that I've been acting like a baby and I need to get over myself and cut it out.

 
Message received!  Right now I'm officially starting this day over. I am pulling forward all the blessings that I take for granted and spending my time being grateful. 


Here's a very small list of the first few things I thought of when I decided to be grateful:

1. My wonderful family, both immediate and extended, those who are still with us and those who aren't.  I wish I could post a full paragraph about each of my kids, my husband and in-laws, my sisters, my nieces and nephews, my parents, my grandparents, my aunts, uncles, and cousins (and I have a LOT of cousins!) to tell you why each of them is special and unique, and has had a positive impact on my life.

2.  My awesome friends.  In short, I have the best friends available, anywhere. Each one is a treasure I have been lucky enough to find.

3.  Everyday opportunities. We live in a safe, comfortable house, our kids go to great schools, Frank has a very good job, we feel safe where we live, we have enough food to eat, we have clean clothes to wear, we drive cars that are comfortable and that work, we have access to excellent medical care, we have clean water to drink and we can take hot baths/showers whenever we want.
Today I will go out into the world with gratefulness rather then crabbiness in my heart.  Have a great day.  I think I will now, too.

You know what else? I am grateful for you!

2 comments:

  1. Christy is such a blessing to all of us. I am so very sorry for your loss. Prayers for God's healing hand upon you and your whole family.

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  2. I am grateful for your blog and your friendship !

    ReplyDelete