Just Face It

Today I am grateful for a good run yesterday, to be able to be of help to a friend who is moving, and to have had a phone conversation with my good friend Sheila over the weekend. 

Like me, my sister Aileen is also a writer and a blogger. Check out her blog, "Poetic License: Poetry and Commentary on Current Events," here. This is a poem she posted a few days ago.

I Can See Gratitude...
I can see
gratitude
from here
but can't 
get there,
the road
closed for now,
blocked by a landslide 
of worry and fear.
Perhaps it is
enough to keep
looking in the
right direction
ready to 
move ahead.

I love this poem. I love my sister's writing. It has a clarified edge that good writers give their words. 
Thank you Aileen!

Sometimes that is all I can do, all I need to do-just face it. Look in the right direction. Face toward the gratitude and away from the self-pity and fear. I feel the old familiar pull of those burdensome emotions from time to time. I try to turn away before the allure of unhealthy escape and flimsy excuses grabs me. They always grabbed tight and pulled me down in my teens and early twenties, in my drinking days. Alcohol was an analgesic, but a lowsy one. It worked temporarily and then hurt worse. 

I had to just face it that I was an alcoholic. That was tough. Just facing gratitude is much easier. And it doesn't sting me like the alcohol and the alcoholic thinking did. It soothes and energizes me. 

The landslide of worry and fear can be very real if I let it heap up from lack of acceptance and meager faith. Sometimes looking in the right direction is enough because it brings me faith and courage to start moving again. If not today, then maybe tomorrow. 

Today is all we get. Just face it. With hope and gratitude.