Gratefully Aware

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.” 
       ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I spend a lot of time pondering.  My mind can wander and travel through time and space and back without me even realizing it.  Some call this ADD, I call it awesome.  Something I've been thinking a lot about is how easily bitterness can be nourished within a person.  The truth is that we all experience moments in life that could change us for the better or for the worse.  What is the defining difference in our experiences?  What is the piece that is present in an experience changing us for the better, that is not present in an experience changing us for the worst?  That's what I've been thinking about lately.  When I struggled the most through my decision to place my baby boy for adoption, I used to do posts on gratitude.  I haven't done a post like that for a while now.  I'm going to start doing that more frequently again.  And I'm starting it right here, right now.

This week, so far, I am grateful:

-For rain clouds.  I am in love with rain.  I love the smell of it, I love the feeling of it, I love that it can be torrential or soft and quiet.  Summer has come quickly to Utah, and this week, today is the second day in a row of overcast weather.  I love Utah's rain season because it is an interruption and refresher to the consistent heat.
-My cat.  Dang it, she's ornery and aggressive, but she is also the cutest furry gremlin I've ever seen.  She is healing from being spayed and she is such a trooper.  I'm grateful that she is strong because I've grown attached to her and I want to keep her around for a while yet.
-My family.  We've had our differences in the past, but no matter how opinionated and passionate we can get about our differences, I know that they will always love me and watch my back.  I know people who can't say the same about their family, and so I am truly blessed for my family.
-Air conditioning.  End of story.  Period.  It's a wonderful thing.
-Antibiotics and Modern Medicine.  You remember my experience of nearly slicing my finger off?  Well, it became infected and it hurt.  I called the hospital and talked to them about it and was issues and antibiotic which I have now taken for 2 days.  It's helped tremendously.  I can't imagine living in a time where this kind of injury and infection could lead to the loss of a finger, simply because there was no medicine to counteract the infection.  It really is something to think about. Two-hundred years ago, the near slicing off of my fingertip and rehabilitation from said accident could have resulted in something quite different and not good.

What is the benefit of finding silly things to be grateful for?  Well, before I wrote this post I was feeling pretty aggressive.  I don't like my clients.  I'm not grateful for them, and at the same time I am because they are a perfect road map to me of what I want to avoid and by acting as a microscope to their lives, I know the warning signs and how to avoid what their lives have become.  So, for as much as I don't like them, I'm grateful for them... in a disconnected kind of way.  Their drama has put me in an aggressive mood.  But, by focusing on the pleasant things of the week, for as long as it took to focus and recount them, it took me away from the drama which is pretty great.

It's simple and it's easy to forget to do, counting my blessings, but it's absolutely necessary in order to stay grounded and focused.  I won't always work with these types of clients, and as crazy as it sounds, there will probably come a day where I will miss this job because of all I've learned from it and will continue to learn from it.  I've noticed that with my past jobs.  There have been so many days where I've said to myself, "Holy crap, self, I would so take working with drug addicts over [insert client name here]."  In reality, though, my life was often threatened at my last job, so do I really miss it?  Not really.  As cliche as it sounds, there really is a time and a season for everything.  I don't pretend to believe that our lives are pre-destined, but I do believe in a greater power, even if I don't know what to call that greater power.  The choice is ours but it doesn't mean that there isn't a more supreme being who looks at what we've chosen and given us specific opportunities to make the best of it.

I'm meant to be "here" right now.  You are meant to be experiencing what you are experiencing now.  I realize that my saying that could ruffle some feathers because I know there are people out there who are fighting through Hell right now and it's not fair that life can be so rough.  I know that feeling.  But, I also know that I wouldn't be who I am now without facing those moments that hurt the most.  The defining difference on whether or not I choose to be bitter or happy is in me.  It's my choice.  I've had moments where I've felt that to close off and be bitter would be preferable because it felt the safest at that time.  I can recall when I've said to myself, "Anger becomes you, so wear it."  And I did.  For a while, I wore it, and I liked it.  And then it didn't feel right anymore.  It was my decision.  Maybe it served it's purpose, or maybe it just prolonged the lesson from being learned that I ultimately ended up learning.  Either way, the decision was mine.  We can choose to be grateful or we can choose to be angry.  The decision is as individual to us as our unique experiences.  Some experiences are harder than other's, but for every person who is struggling, their experience is the worst it could be.  How we come out from it all, is under our control.