Habitual Gratitude

Today I am grateful for a break from work. I am also grateful for the chance to spend some time with my friend Liz. Like Jenny who I mentioned in my previous two posts, Liz is someone I worked with and who I hadn't seen in a while. Liz and I worked closely together advising a student peer empowerment group at our school for years and when she taught middle school students that I also served as counselor. Liz took a leave this year and has since decided to retire. I already missed her this year and got used to not having her around at school to vent to and to bounce ideas or concerns off of. But now that it is official, I will truly miss her presence and her genuine value as a teacher and a co-worker in our school. She is both an excellent teacher and a wonderful, caring, practical person. So it was especially nice to spend some time with her yesterday. We went for a nice walk, had a delicious breakfast, and passed the time in healthy conversation. Liz is someone I trust and res...

Today I am grateful for church services and yoga poses, both of which can help quiet and calm me. I went to Palm Sunday services at our church yesterday with my family. As a child, I must admit that I dreaded Palm Sunday services because they were long. I have learned to enjoy the sitting, the listening, the setting I am in instead of wishing the time would pass faster. I guess some wisdom does come with age. I mentioned yesterday that my friend Jenny practices and teaches yoga. She has taught me some exercises and there are a couple I use most days. One is a breathing exercise, the other is a stretching pose called Half Moon. This is the Bikram yoga Half Moon. Between the breathing and the stretching, it is a good way to start my day. Together they open me up, clear out what clutter might remain from the previous day, and they allow me to be more receptive to the day ahead. Like any other habit, some days I feel them fully, some days I am more going through the motions. When g...

Today I am grateful for the recliners in our living room and for a long overdue visit with my friend Jenny. Jenny and I got together last night and as always had plenty to talk about. We were surprised to determine that it had been over a year and a half since we had seen each other. We've had phone conversations, shared texts back and forth, made plans to get together that ended up falling through . . . and we each have busy lives with our families and other commitments. Next thing you know, it's a year and a half later. I always enjoy time with Jenny. She has the kind of energy I like to be around. Inevitably we always run out of time together before we run out of conversation. We were born six weeks apart in 1965. She's a city girl. I'm a farm girl. We met in 2000 when we ended up working at the same school. We were each diagnosed with breast cancer within weeks of one another in 2008. That is when we went from friendly co-workers to a much deeper level of frie...

Today I am grateful for a non-work project to give focus to and I am grateful for time with recovery friends. I am also grateful for the couple of times I got to hold our grandson Leo this week. Each time I hold him it is a quick trip to mindful presence. He gets my full attention and everything else stops for a few minutes. His sounds, stretches, breaths, smells, and facial expressions all keep me mesmerized. If you have held an infant lately, surely this all sounds familiar. If it's been a while since you held a newborn, hold one the next chance you get and it will all come back to you. What are other ways I can take a quick trip to mindful presence? Paying attention to my own breathing. In. Out. In. Out. And pausing. Just pausing. I have always struggled with quiet meditation and felt like something of a failure because I couldn't slow my mind down for 15 minutes of silence and mind-clearing. I have learned what works for me are pauses. They can be mere seconds or a ...

Today I am grateful for these first three years as a blogger and I am grateful to those of you who take the time to read and reflect on my words. Three years ago today I posted my very first "Habitual Gratitude" blog post. How time flies when you are having fun and improving your outlook on life. I began keeping a gratitude journal in 1995. I have been writing my own thoughts on gratitude for a long time. It became a much different ball game when I started writing about gratitude with other readers in mind though. I had no idea what I would learn and gain, what I continue to learn and gain. The process of habitually noting how gratefulness looks in simple, daily ways has deepened my own sense of what mindful appreciation is all about. What I didn't anticipate is how it would further bring out the writer in me. Practice doesn't make perfect, but practice does make better. In blogging and in observing and internalizing gratitude. Here  is that very first post from...

Today I am grateful for a bike ride last evening. It was chilly but invigorating. I am also grateful for my extended family. One brief visit to my family can yield plenty of fodder for some gratefulness. I was able to get to my niece Katie and her family's new house on this visit. They moved in late last year. I was joined by my sister Zita and we got to enjoy the company of our sister-in-law Charlene, our nephew's wife Kristi, and Katie's family-husband Danny and children Saela and Liam. Just part of one branch of our large family tree. I appreciate any chance to see family and to spend time with people I don't get to see often. I am blessed with the large family I have, and blessed that we all care about one another and no one has been sent into permanent exile. But I also have a sadness at times because I can't give the kind of time and attention to my large family that I would like to. I do what I can. They do what they can. We are all busy and we all have o...

Today I am grateful for each chance I have to hold our grandson Leo. I am also grateful for the life lessons I have learned over the years and decades. Part of the farm life I spoke of yesterday is the job of cleaning out feedlots. Spring is a good time for that task. My brother was doing just that on our recent visit. Loading up manure in the manure spreader and then putting it on some of the fields as fertilizer. Load after load. In fact, on my last trip through an A-Z gratitude list, manure was one of my "m" words.  Here  is that post from earlier this year. But since manure is created every day, I guess I can add a few more thoughts about it. There are plenty of analogies and metaphors about life when discussing manure. If manure is never cleared out, it becomes a rotting, heaping pile of major stink. It works better to reduce the pile and spread it out so air can get to it. Spread it out and let nature take its course and turn it to nutrients for the soil. That i...