Offering

I am profoundly blessed. Let me change that - I feel profoundly blessed. I'm sitting in a rocking chair on my front porch. The sun warms me despite the brisk late February breeze. My neighborhood is relatively quiet. There's a dog barking close by. An airplane hums in the distance. Traffic from the highway is not far off but not loud enough to pierce my concentration or good mood. I feel safe. I am lucky to live in a neighborhood where I feel safe on my front porch, puttering in the backyard, or walking the five minutes down to the park. So many people in this world don't enjoy this luxury. They don't get to sun themselves in relative peace and quiet. They don't feel the gratification of slicing and eating a juicy, warm tomato grown in their backyard. These seem like simple things, but I am aware that they are luxuries for most of the people in this world.

Why me?

I know there is some element of karma at play - choices I made led me here to some extent. But let's not forget about luck. Plain old luck. And the part of me that worries and frets daily feels like throwing salt over my shoulder or crossing myself, because luck can turn on a dime. I know this.

But today, I choose happy.

Like so many others in the country right now, my brilliant, creative husband is underemployed. We get frustrated, down, worried, and that's to be expected. I keep coming back to my faith in the goodness of life. Life is what you make of it. Like Oprah, this is what I know for sure. It sounds corny, but I think that how you view the world creates your reality. I choose to shutter worry and float in gratitude.

Gratitude is the best daily practice I know to keep sadness and worry at bay. Like someone sitting in meditation practice returns to the breath, I must return to gratitude. Breathe in, breathe out. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My relationship to God is something I am still forming all the time, but I offer my thanks to whoever or whatever is out there listening.