Day 5

Today was a very challenging day for me to express gratitude. I tried to be grateful for the little things like an extra-long hot shower, German chocolate cake coffee, the gorgeous sunshine on my walk to work - that seemed to make the minus 26 wind chill toasty warm. But my heart was heavy.

I haven’t mentioned this yet on my blog, as my positive side has been trying to block it out until I am strong enough to face it. My best friend’s Mom died suddenly of a massive brain aneurysm. She was only 53 years old. Shanna and I have been friends since grade 1 so I was very close with her Mom. She had a smile that lit up the room and when you looked in her eyes you knew how much she genuinely cared about you. Just last week I saw Shanna and her Mom and we were planning to go to breakfast together – the three of us - later this week. Sadly we never got the chance.

I will always be grateful for having the opportunity to have known Lila - how loved I felt when she hugged me, how much she cared about the needs of others before her own. She was such a caregiver and put her heart into everything. I loved Lila. I would do anything to bring her back, she had so much life left to live. She sure touched the hearts of many.

Through adversity it is very difficult to be grateful, but like the speaker said in the video from yesterday (The 3 A’s of Awesome) – between high highs we will all have lumps and bumps – you too will be tossed into the well. You will have twists in your stomach and holes in your heart. And when that bad news washes over you and that pain sponges and soaks in, you always have two choices:

1) you can swirl and twirl and gloom and doom forever, or

2) you can grieve and then face the future with newly sober eyes

Having a great attitude means that no matter how difficult it is or what pain hits you, choosing to move forward and take baby steps into the future.

This quote was of comfort to me when I lost a friend to a fire before Christmas, and after rereading it, it offers comfort tonight as well:

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” - Louise Erdrich

Ending tonight’s gratitude journal entry with a very inspirational video about a young man that is grateful for everything he has. His attitude is so contagious - he is spreading his love of life to everyone he meets.

He cheered up my spirit. Gratitude is such a virtue. It warms my heart.