Gratitude is a Choice...

 It has been one month and seven days since I had experienced the greatest loss in my adult years, and while I do have air in my lungs and a sound mind to write to you, I can’t say that the feeling is a good one. However, I would love for you to know that today like all the others and prayerfully tomorrow, I am choosing gratitude. 

I am pretty sure you know that gratitude is a choice, sure you do, we hear it and see it everywhere. Rather it’s a meme on the gram or a one hundred character typed thought on Twitter or a seemingly happy looking woman or man pointing to the quote itself, we are clear that life is comprised of choices and gratitude is one of them. While I agree with this notion, getting there took some work. In a world of images and man-made self-proclaiming goals, I'll admit I got a bit lost in the sauce. I had this idea if one thing was going right, everything in life needed to fall in line. While that was my desire, it felt like nothing in my life was going right. I felt strung along in every which direction, cliffhanger after cliffhanger just to discover the show was canceled and while I had friends that continued to champion the valley experience as it were just around the corner, it just didn’t feel that way. Perhaps I had used all that I reserved to get right to this point and the mere exhaustion of it all landed right here. At that moment gratitude seemed more like an option than a choice.

Honestly, and sadly, I had succumbed to the pressure of life and began wallowing in the fact I did have a reason to be highly annoyed with the entire situation of my life (rather self-inflicted and/or life inflicted). Not that I was looking for people to join me in this party of pity, but it sure would be nice to have some compassionate people to join along but let’s be honest, it only takes one bad apple to ruin the bunch. I was the apple, and the apple was me. So, this gratitude thing. At this moment I was working in my mind on how to express my honest feelings about the experience but not allow the experience to warrant a permanent reaction that furthered my dismay. So, here’s what I came up with since I still have a sound mind and an open heart, I will use that and be grateful. I will continue to dig deep to find things to be grateful for instead of thinking of the many things I do not have. I'll be honest, I am not a fan of it because it feels like a bit more work than I personally desire, but isn't that what life is all about, doing the work to gain the desires of our heart.

Family and friends, my wisdom for you today is to not allow what you don’t see take you to a pit that you will physically have to crawl out of. Do not allow the worries of this world to dismay you but allow it to push you closer to what you know you desire and focus on that. Remember whatever you water, grows. Water gratitude and allow it to transform your life!

Sincerely,

Sara J.