Gratitude
Well, I was hoping to get this posted on Thanksgiving, but I'm a little late. As I told my students yesterday, it is still November, so we are still focusing on gratitude. Really, we have been trying to focus on gratitude more everyday of the year.
This year, with lots of medical issues in our family - not just us but other friends and family, especially little Everett (our nephew), we have been reflecting on what helped us get through tough times. We have been holding on to these things as we continue to face this new challenge.
We realized that our positivity and gratitude helped us so much. We didn't even really know it at the time, but we see it in others. We see others going through a hard time and we have seen how things are harder to face when positives are taken for granted.
No matter what you are going through - hang on to gratitude and positivity. Dan and I use these words interchangeably. I know they are very different, but in what we went through, we saw how they are also the same. It is so easy to focus on the terrible things that happen. We have to go through tests and doctors appointments and sadness and heartache. These things are right in our face. Our pains are not always things that we can or want to overlook. Loss, the desire to be a mother, the challenge of a sick family member or our own health concerns - these are things that we need to deal with, we cannot just ignore them and we don't want to. We need to take care of ourselves physically and emotionally.
At the same time, we want to stay positive. Dan always says that his kidney disease taught him to stay positive. He focused on all of the things that we had going for us during that time. He was faced with a challenge, but he knew that he couldn't focus on how tough it was or how unfair it was. That's what I call gratitude - see what I mean with the overlap? We took time to talk about what we were thankful for. We tried our best not to complain to others, but to remember the good things that were going on or that we had in our lives. We focused on the great doctors and medical care, the ability to qualify for a transplant, the wonderful friends and family surrounding us...
We know that it isn't as easy as it sounds. Try starting a gratitude journal. Make yourself write three things a day that you are thankful for. Make a point to say a positive for every negative when giving family updates. Just try to implement one thing into your routine to improve your gratitude and positivity. We. Know. This. Is. Hard. But we think that it is harder if you don't do it.
Life is tough. Our prayer for you is that by being mindful of positivity and gratitude you can bring a little light into your dark times.
This year, with lots of medical issues in our family - not just us but other friends and family, especially little Everett (our nephew), we have been reflecting on what helped us get through tough times. We have been holding on to these things as we continue to face this new challenge.
We realized that our positivity and gratitude helped us so much. We didn't even really know it at the time, but we see it in others. We see others going through a hard time and we have seen how things are harder to face when positives are taken for granted.
No matter what you are going through - hang on to gratitude and positivity. Dan and I use these words interchangeably. I know they are very different, but in what we went through, we saw how they are also the same. It is so easy to focus on the terrible things that happen. We have to go through tests and doctors appointments and sadness and heartache. These things are right in our face. Our pains are not always things that we can or want to overlook. Loss, the desire to be a mother, the challenge of a sick family member or our own health concerns - these are things that we need to deal with, we cannot just ignore them and we don't want to. We need to take care of ourselves physically and emotionally.
At the same time, we want to stay positive. Dan always says that his kidney disease taught him to stay positive. He focused on all of the things that we had going for us during that time. He was faced with a challenge, but he knew that he couldn't focus on how tough it was or how unfair it was. That's what I call gratitude - see what I mean with the overlap? We took time to talk about what we were thankful for. We tried our best not to complain to others, but to remember the good things that were going on or that we had in our lives. We focused on the great doctors and medical care, the ability to qualify for a transplant, the wonderful friends and family surrounding us...
We know that it isn't as easy as it sounds. Try starting a gratitude journal. Make yourself write three things a day that you are thankful for. Make a point to say a positive for every negative when giving family updates. Just try to implement one thing into your routine to improve your gratitude and positivity. We. Know. This. Is. Hard. But we think that it is harder if you don't do it.
Life is tough. Our prayer for you is that by being mindful of positivity and gratitude you can bring a little light into your dark times.
Darcy and Dan - please know that your posts and thoughts are very much appreciated, and that my heart goes out to what you're going through. You guys are always in my thoughts and if you ever need to talk, I'm always here.
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