The five things I'm most grateful for today are (drumroll, please!!!)...
5. An apartment! We resigned our lease today...lucky for us, this place is not really in demand, so they hadn't filled the apartment yet. Hey, whatever works. While it's not my favorite choice, it's the choice we've made, and I'm feeling good about it...and now we don't have to worry about packing up and moving, or the costs involved, which means I can go on Paul's trip to Norfolk with him for a while without having to worry about moving in the middle of all of it!
4. Friends' blogs. As hard as things are sometimes, and as lonely as I feel, you just never know when a friend is going to post something that is really more an answer to your prayers than anything else in the world! Yesterday, TWO friends posted thoughts that just sort of helped me refocus a little and put a few things into perspective while still validating my feelings. One of them shared a story about her little boy who wanted a "do over" of the day because he left his teddy bear at home and it just sort of put everything out of whack. She and her hubby had a talk with him about how time moves FORWARD and so must we. Wow, did I need to hear that, or what? I've been living with regrets from the past a LOT and I just need to chalk it up to a bad day, learn from it, and move on. The second friend posted about forgivenes--of herself and others--and about her trust issues of the Lord. She said that she knows Heavenly Father is always right, and He's working in her life, but she doesn't really trust Him to take the reigns because she is afraid of getting hurt. I SO RELATE TO THIS! It really helped me put words to some of the things I've been feeling lately, and talking it all over with Paul helped even more. So, long story short, I'm grateful for you people who post your experiences and thoughts about your own lives because it always helps me learn a thing or two, too. And feel way more connected.
3. Speaking of human connections! I'm SO GRATEFUL today that--while I still do spend a lot of time online in blogs and facebook--I'm not living vicariously through those mediums. I DO have a life and a mind of my own. We just watched the movie Surrogates last night, and MAN ALIVE did it spark some deep thoughts in me about what technologies I--and our whole society--hide behind. It made me want to unplug everything for a while and just talk to Paul. :)
2. I'm SO grateful for those naturally cheerful people in the world who do things like THIS BLOGGER/PHOTOGRAPHER does all. the. time. I really do love to laugh (who doesn't?) and the video at that link just made me giggle all day long yesterday!
1. I'm especially grateful that (knock on wood) Voodoo is finally starting to show some signs of learning to be housebroken. At least, she now knows that it is bad to go in the house (that doesn't always stop her!) and we're down to one accident a day, if that. I was super stressed out having to clean up after her all day long and not knowing what I was doing wrong--I was following everyone's advice online and NOTHING was working for weeks and weeks. If she can get completely housetrained before Cerene takes her back, then there would have been a point to her being here! Also, I'm thankful that she's learning some cool tricks--she's pretty solid on the whole sit and beg thing, and mostly on "down"...I can get her to crawl and roll over about 75% of the time, too, as long as she's not TOO hungry--then she just lunges for the food in my hand! We've also started on "come" and "stay," which she's really bad about. But there's progress! And not too shabby for only having her a few weeks, really. So I'm grateful...grateful to have her around, and grateful to be able to serve a little in such a fun way!
Glad I could help, like I said it's something I have been working on, hoped that it could help you also. Something I read said that it took one woman a year to really forgive those that had hurt her or the pain that she felt. I also realized that by reading this weeks Sunday School lesson that Christ prayed for one hour to not do God's will, one hour for telling God that he would do all that was asked of him, and they an hour working through the pains of the Atonement. It made me think do we spend more time telling God we don't want to do something instead of equal time on all three, saying no, saying "your will be done," and finally doing what was asked of us or even moving in the right direction.
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