A Grateful Woman

Each day we wake to new beginnings and new challenges. We have opportunities to make decisions or to change the ones we made yesterday. It's good to begin a clean slate....and to watch to see how life will write across it.

Sometimes when we are challenged with something, we find ourselves complaining about it. We seem to complain about so many things. What's the use? It doesn't change a thing, except our mood. I don't know why we bother! Wouldn't we rather just look the difficulty in the eye, and move toward overcoming it? There's so much more satisfaction when you finally get victory over the annoyance than there is in sitting and complaining about it.

There are times when there's nothing we can do but learn to accept a situation as it is and work around it. Those circumstances teach us to do what we can and trust the good Lord for the rest.

We're given so many gifts that we didn't have to work for...or things we didn't expect... we often become blind to them. We take them for granted, and we certainly shouldn't. When I'm reminded by that still,small voice within me, of all the wonderful things I have known in my lifetime, I am overcome with gratitude for these are all things I didn't deserve. That's what makes them gifts, that they came to me through no effort of my own...not even a request for them!

I find myself drowning in gratitude this morning. I'm blessed beyond measure! A God who watches over us and protects us, a husband who treats me with respect and special care, children and grandchildren to love and enrich my life, work to do with my hands, a lovely home to protect me from the elements, good health and enough supply to keep us living comfortably. I think of those who live beneath the bridges in the city...those whose families have abandoned them, or those with no families at all. There's no one to care for them, those whose hearts are empty, those whose lives are lonely. So many live in nursing homes with strangers who are paid to meet their needs, and others live in the confines of bodies or minds that don't perform in ways that are considered normal.

What is there for me to complain about? Nothing. And so, I revel in thanksgiving and pray that my heart will remain grateful. I pray that I will remember, moment to moment... I am truly a blessed woman!