Thanks
Today I am grateful for a fender bender with no injuries and a valuable lesson to a young driver. I am also grateful for car insurance.
A minor inconvenience for me was kept in perspective by Anne Lamott's second essential prayer:Thanks. Thanks again for no injuries and a vehicle that would still get me home. Thanks for reminding me that in the whole scheme of things, this is nothing. Nothing in comparison to things like metastatic breast cancer or siblings dying suddenly or alcoholics going back to the bottle.
I so appreciate Anne Lamott's style because she writes raw and genuine. Her words often strike an emotional nerve with me. Here is one striking passage from the "Thanks" chapter:
"It is easy to thank God for life when things are going well. But life is much bigger than we give it credit for, and much of the time it's harder than we would like. It's a package deal, though. Sometimes our mouths sag open with exhaustion, and our souls and our minds do, too, with defeat and that saggy opening is what we needed all along. Any opening leads to the chance of flow, which sometimes is the best we can hope for, and a minor miracle at that, open and fascinated, instead of tense and scared and shut down. God, thank you." (pp. 44-45)
That is what gratitude practice can do for me--keep me open and fascinated, even at the little things, the minor miracles. I spent years tense, scared, and shut down. I don't want to go back there.
Sometimes life is hard. No doubt about it. But in my experience, gratitude is always possible. It does allow a positive flow, even if just a trickle at times. I'll take that.
A minor inconvenience for me was kept in perspective by Anne Lamott's second essential prayer:Thanks. Thanks again for no injuries and a vehicle that would still get me home. Thanks for reminding me that in the whole scheme of things, this is nothing. Nothing in comparison to things like metastatic breast cancer or siblings dying suddenly or alcoholics going back to the bottle.
I so appreciate Anne Lamott's style because she writes raw and genuine. Her words often strike an emotional nerve with me. Here is one striking passage from the "Thanks" chapter:
"It is easy to thank God for life when things are going well. But life is much bigger than we give it credit for, and much of the time it's harder than we would like. It's a package deal, though. Sometimes our mouths sag open with exhaustion, and our souls and our minds do, too, with defeat and that saggy opening is what we needed all along. Any opening leads to the chance of flow, which sometimes is the best we can hope for, and a minor miracle at that, open and fascinated, instead of tense and scared and shut down. God, thank you." (pp. 44-45)
That is what gratitude practice can do for me--keep me open and fascinated, even at the little things, the minor miracles. I spent years tense, scared, and shut down. I don't want to go back there.
Sometimes life is hard. No doubt about it. But in my experience, gratitude is always possible. It does allow a positive flow, even if just a trickle at times. I'll take that.
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