“Today I am thankful!”

Today, my heart feels heavy.  I woke up this morning thankful for another day.  Thankful for another breathe of life.  Thankful for my children, thankful for my friends and family.  God has abundantly blessed my life beyond measure.  No, not because I have a lot of money or life is easy – no, life is hard a lot of time, but I always feel like God is in my presence and his hand is guiding me, making sure that I am taken care of.  But I don’t express this enough.  I don’t say it enough.  My heart is heavy knowing that just the other day I was complaining to myself about how rough of a month it has been both financially and emotionally for me.  Asking “why me, why can’t I get a break?”  It is easy to do this.  It is so easy to find so many negative things to complain and gripe about.  It is easy to feel short-handed at times when things don’t go our way.  But, it is just as easy to find things to be thankful for.  Things to be positive about, live for, laugh at, and love.

It is important that we allow events in our lives to give us a moment of reflection.  A moment to stop and truly remember how lucky and blessed I am.  No, my life is nowhere near perfect and I deal with struggles almost daily, but in comparison to others, I feel like my blessings outweigh any struggles I may face.  Life is ever so fleeting.  Moments come and go.  Some are bad, some are good, some are great.  But it’s those cold, rainy days that help us to appreciate  when the warm, sunny days come.  Life is so precious.  It is a gift meant to be treasured at every moment.  Think about time… it is fully measured in seconds.  Seconds that add up to minutes, hours, days, months, and years.  And each of those seconds count.  Each of those seconds are a moment you can’t get back, a moment to do the right thing, a moment to tell someone how much they mean to you, a moment to take a chance and risk it all on love, a moment to do something you never thought you could do.  Life is filled with moments.  Sometimes we are so busy looking ahead trying to reach a destination that we completely forget to enjoy the journey along the way.

Today, I will take a moment and reflect on how blessed my life really is.  I will think about the simple, little things that most of the time I never think about.  Air to breathe, eyes to see, the ability to run, food to eat.  I will take each moment, and try to remember to be kind, to say thank you, to say I love you, to help someone.  I will do and say things that I hope will inspire others.  Each new day and each second, I am given a gift from God to have purpose during my time here.  I want my life to make a difference even if it is only minimally.  I want to use God’s gift as abundantly as I can.

Let us grasp and hold of life and seize every opportunity that comes our way.  Life is short, life is fleeting, and life comes and goes so quickly.  Capture each moment and make the most of it.  Choose to be grateful.  Choose to be kind.  Choose to accept your gift each day with happiness knowing that it was given to you for a reason.  Choose to use it well.

Article courtesy of the Pink Runner Girl.