As I’ve mentioned here before, one of the richest memories of my life is how I used to get up at 5:30 in the morning with my dad. It was our time. We’d eat GrapeNuts and tell each other about the miracle(s) we’d seen the day before. I still try to like GrapeNuts and I still try to look for miracles every day.
Finding the miracles has been harder for me lately. I might notice (my word for 2015) lovely people, places, or things, but I’ve allowed circumstances, over which I feel powerless, to cloud my ability to recognize them as miracles. That’s gotta change.
Here’s how I’m going to change it. Yes/And. I completely accept the reality that YES there are many things going on the world, over which I have no control. AND while I continue to attend to what I can, I’m going to focus on the light, the good, the possible, along with the people doing the light, good, and possible.
YES, the divisions, gloom, fear, and darkness will still be around. My focus, however, will not be as glued to it, as it has been lately. I’m going to focus on the power of miracles. When I find myself tempted to dwell in the negative longer than is necessary, I’m going to seek out AND people, places, and things. AND people, places and things are the miracles Daddy and I used to share with each other daily. I’ll share some of them with you, here.
So, we celebrated Thanksgiving this past week, in the U.S. Wouldn’t it be cool if we celebrated it every day? I try to be grateful everyday. Some days, it’s tough though. Some days, it seems God, The Universe, and Everything offer me too many opportunities to just plain scream.
Yes, I want to be one of those eternally positive and grateful humans AND sometimes I let outside circumstances overpower my gratitude.
Does this ever happen to you? How do you deal with it?
Lisa’s Cheap Therapy blog 
Sometimes it is outside circumstances (politics!!!) but often, it’s inside circumstances: physical pain really does make it hard to do things the way I was ‘used to’ doing them, a get clumsy, and I get frustrated. At such times I try to ‘take it easy, but take it’ . . . more slowly. I am learning to be satisfied with less productivity, but still getting some things done, to appreciate and be grateful for what I have been able to accomplish, knowing that it took some determination to get there – even if it is one laundry load or one bag of recycling or donated books out the door. I am working on adjusting my expectations of what I can do to the reality of my body, even as I work on getting stronger and less beset by discomfort. And of course I am learning to be enormously grateful to family and friends who help me by doing heavy lifting whenever they are here.
Often times, when my circumstances seem to be bogging me down… if I can just verbally decompress with a friend or loved one who is a “safe and trusted space” (i.e. what I say or share will not leave the room)…. I can “ get all the yuck out” and get back into a place of feeling gratitude again…. 🙏❤️
being grateful all the time is SOOOOO HARD. i don’t know that it is completely humanly possible. For me yoga and breathing. A LOT OF BREATHING. Yoga lets me be with me and breathe out anything I find stuck in me, including physical tension and mental tension. all that usually helps me come back around to what’s important and what i have control over.
Even when you are down, you lift people up! Sometimes we just need the hurt to run through us like a summer cold – in – out & back in the SUN.
Always remember -🎶 When you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand and nothing, nothing is going right…. You just call out my name and I’ll be there in a hurry…’Cause you’ve got a BFFS FRIEND. 🎶😘.