The Gratitude Well

*Life Balance August 12, 2007*

Life Balance: When your life exists in such perfect harmony that the energy force within you is in sync with the heartbeat inside. A feeling of overwhelming strength, joy, laughter, love and intelligence that is older then time itself. The sense within you, that your very soul and spirit and divine wisdom are acting as one.

“Today I wish I was 25….Mom, don’t wish away 20 years of your life. If you were 25, I wouldn’t have been born yet”----Hannah, age 11 going on 100.


How can the daily well of gratitude replenish our spirit if our lives are so out of whack that we complain about everything?

When we are crushed for time, many things irritate us, and nothing seems to please us. I think God sends us reminders throughout the day to pull us back to the life of joy he intended for us, but we keep our blinders on and don’t see them. We perceive that we are in a never ending circle, when we really are on a road with a turn-off right around the corner. God will make me smile with a phone from my daughter Hannah, just calling to say good morning Mommy, and I will change instantly to a mid-life crisis moment, fueled by the heat of a menopause tsunami soaking my hair. And then I often find it impossible to feel any joy or peace.

I was thinking about gratitude the other day at work. It’s been much more pleasant to go to work everyday since I changed my attitude on how I view myself and my job. I used to feel downtrodden and defeated. Everything someone said or did reinforced this. But then I realized I was doing this to myself with my thoughts. So I traded up for better thoughts. Put flowers on my desk; built an inspiration wall right in my line of eyesight, so I can look at a good quote or a funny cartoon throughout the day. Cleaned up the clutter and stopped hanging on to useless piles of hard copy files when everything is electronic. I changed the radio to music from anger filled talk radio.

But I sometimes still feel bad….and wondered why. And then it hit me. Gratitude grows from living in the present, not in the world of the past or in the world of possibilities that can never be. God sends us a little dose of reality to remind us to enjoy now…and sometimes it’s in the voice of our children, who really are the precious gifts God meant them to be.