Gratitude

To truly move past an issue, event, disruption or heartache, we must become grateful for its presence. We must become grateful for its lessons. Its opportunities. Its exact, right timing in invoking needful inner growth. No matter what the circumstance, we must be grateful it happened. And we must be sincere in our gratitude, or the pain, the anxiety and the victim-mentality will seep into our marrow and discolor the way we interact with the vast beauty of the world.

Gratitude is the golden key that unlocks the prison of the heart and the mind. Gratitude brings us out of denial and into acceptance. It lifts us out of chaos and into order. It removes us from confusion and brings forth clarity. It allows us to see that all we have, right here, right now, is all we truly need. It allows us to see that our lives are enough. That our lives are valuable. That our lives have meaning. No matter what illness we have, no matter what money we have or don't have, no matter who is or isn't in our lives.

Gratitude is also the golden key to moving us into more loving, prosperous circumstances. By helping us to let go of staleness, it ushers in freshness in the form of new people and new opportunities. It allows the previously unimagined to present itself. It allows greater life into life.

Gratitude is the last sentence that allows the painful chapter to be done. If gratitude was the prayer we uttered before beginning anything, our lessons and inner growth would be less painful. Our clarity would not waver. Our value would not be in question. An attitude of gratitude makes sense of our past, invokes peace in our present and paves a love-filled road to our future.

{Thank you, God, for the slow, hard-drive-crashing death of my present computer. No, I cannot add digital photos to my blog posts at present, and I've lost many stored things, but this event has allowed me to think more highly of myself and enter the 21st century. I have ordered a custom built computer, with a sexy, sleek black and silver flat screen. And a boatload of gigabytes to let me post pictures to my heart's content.}