Gratitude Week #2

I'm going to ask you to trick yourself into believing that it's still Friday (because of my every, ahem, Friday gratitude post).  Powers of the mind can be very convincing (believe me, I watched INCEPTION last night, and, whoa, talk about powers of the mind...).

I dug deep this week.  Sickness likes to push gratitude to the backseat.  But there is ALWAYS something to be grateful for:

1.  Long-distance Friends.  My closest friends live hundreds of miles away.  Phone friends.  Dear phone friends.  We've had years to cultivate our friendship, but have moved over the years.  The kind who when you've forgotten who you are, remind you just by talking about random, everyday-sort of things.  The kind who can hear you say irrational and sometimes awful things that you don't really mean (but maybe you do, for a second, anyway) and won't judge you.  In fact, they love you all the more and know you'll move on or overcome what's challenging you.  They see all the goodness in you, even when you can't.  I love you.

2.  Mother.  A mom who'll still let me be an eight year-old little girl who stayed home sick from school.  There's something so completely wonderful about being taken care of by Mom.

3.  POST Selects Great Grains with crunchy pecans.  Oh, my favorite cereal ever.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

4.  Warming Rice bag (that's actually a corn bag).  In the olden days they used warming stones.  I use a bag of feed.  Some special kind of corn, I can't remember.   My roomate (Brenda, xoxo) taught us how to make these bags my sophomore year of college and I STILL use it.  Warmth makes me happy.

5.  Children.  I've had a lot of sympathy from my kids this week.  My favorite: the gentle hand strokings along my cheek, lovingly offered from every child.  So tender.

6.  A Shower.  Every day this week I've used ALL the hot water in the house for my showers.  I'm not completely selfish, I do wait for Ben and the kids to use their share first.  I like my skin to turn pink.  Our water heater is a little ghetto, circa '97, I think, so it's probably on it's last leg, anyway.  I'm hoping that I can' wear out our heater faster so we can get a Rinnai water heater.  Dreamy.

7.  The Sun.  Every day, except today (Saturday that's really Friday, remember), the sun has shined!  Glory, glory, hallelujah!  I was walking out of the grocery story with Annie yesterday and mumbled to myself, "Oh, blessed sunshine."  The lady behind me said, "Tell me about it."

8.  God.  He led me to read something I not only needed to read this week, but WANTED to read.  Comfort and gentle reminders of His love for me, little old me.

9.  Friends nearby.  My sweet friend, my pregnant friend, brought our family dinner this week.  Homeade chili, homeade bread, heart-shaped sugar cookies.  I'm am always touched by people who give so freely, lovingly, humbly, when they have just as much reason, if not more, to have a service rendered to them.  Thank you, Kellie.

10.  Lincoln.  Most important of all, on a beautiful February 19, 2005, in sunny Arizona, Lincoln was born.

Definately a week of gratitude.  I'm learning that every week can be a week of gratitude, if I'm aware.