Attitude of Gratitude.....

There is a marked difference between a strengthened heart and a hardened heart…..one can expand, the other breaks. And what makes one heart expand and another break....I think it is living life with a grateful heart. This time of year we are reminded to be thankful by a nationally set aside holiday where we eat ourselves into oblivion, watch football until our eyes glaze over and gather together with those that we have made some sort of peace. Living with a grateful heart is more than a holiday and it takes the courage of David facing Goliath some days.......courage without the turkey and gravy. I have a Goliath list.......

• I appreciate great contrast.....the moments of distress and betrayal that in the long run proved to be groundless fears and gifts that help build character. I am thankful for those who profoundly taught me the evilness of evil and the goodness of good.
  
• I remember with thankfulness the people I have met that have given me a glimpse of my own value and meaning and for those who have shown me the true meaning of human dignity in the face of less than politically correct behavior or any trace of loving kindness or social grace.
  
• There is great gratitude for the dreams that have haunted me.....God-given dreams from which I have drawn inspiration that sustains my spirit and feeds my soul.
• With humility, I give thanks for those that sought me out in my aloneness and gave me a sense of assurance that human kinship confirms life and is a gift of abiding hope.
• And thank you for the fruits of the labors of others, which I have shared as a part of the normal experience of everyday living.
• Most of all, I remember the blessings of beauty.....those things I have seen, heard and felt and touched that have come unheralded across my path, warming my heart and expanding my joyful spirit.

Let every fragment of grinchy, grasping, bitchy, self-absorbed ingratitude be loosened from my mind and swept away by counting my blessings with every beat of my heart. Let me float on the prayers of thanksgiving.....trading in the ticket stubs of ungrateful, stubborn resistance to life's gifts. Let me fly on the quivering vibrations of appreciation, and land with solid affirming gratitude, smack in the middle of this chosen wonderful journey.