Clover Lane

I have found the only way to pull myself out of hard times, low points of my life, grief, a rut, or just the feeling of "stuck", is feeling grateful.  How does one feel grateful?

We have to stop.  Gratitude comes with silence. 

It comes when we rise above our circumstances and look at the bigger stretch of life, not this moment in time when we are struggling. 

It is floating above into the blue sky and looking down on your entire journey of life-what has happened, what is happening, what we want to happen.  It's the ability to see our journey as just that-a stretch of time we are allowed here on earth to FEEL.

Pain is universal, suffering is universal.  We are not and never will be the only humans who are walking through what we are walking through now whatever that could be.  And many would trade places with us.

Thank God for the gift of time and all experiences.  For beauty.  For the one or two or if we are so lucky, the many, who love us.  And who we love in return.  Start with the tiniest thing.   Know that the difficult, if we allow it to change us, can make us stronger and better-it's the unwrapping of those gifts that is the painful part.  Know that the harder and deeper you fall, you will rise that much higher and feel joy that much more.   

Everyone has a bad list and a good list.  The bad things, the good things.  It's the ability to focus on the good, and to find a way to make that list so so much longer than the bad list, that pulls us out of pain. 

That is gratitude.  A choice.