Grateful

I'm feeling grateful today.  

Sometimes as I wind my way through ideas I find the choices I have to make overwhelming.  A serious burden that I am unwilling to shoulder.  It's the thinking of a lazy mind.  I am searching for a new graduate program, searching for peace, searching for clothes that still fit my oldest daughter, searching for something all the time.  Today, feeling slower than usual-having a "true sabbath" kind of sunday, I've found a space for fresh air to blow out this stale, unproductive thinking.  I want to be grateful for where I am.  Not worried and busy, searching for things that yes, may help me somehow, may make a marginal improvement, but mostly it's just another thing I can cross off my list.  I was thinking of going to church today until I realized that this too was another something to cross off the TO DO list.  I can go to church right here on my Mac by taking the pause to reflect on a topic or idea, which is what going to church is really about.  Certainly this is true for us Unitarians.  We specialize in thinking about a lot of things and just thinking a lot.  Today I think I will think for myself on this self-guided tour of the topic of gratefulness.  Take my private spiritual pause to consider what I should show gratitude for.  With so much left undone in life, this can be hard to do. There seem to be so many reasons to be full of complaint, self righteousness, anger-a lot is simply out of our control.  But there are ways to make the best of it-wherever we are.  One way is turn the glass upside down.  Take thing thing that's most on your mind.  That issue that is bothering you.  Look at it long and hard and then flip it over.  Ask yourself why is it happening and then what good could come of it.  In this way I find I can almost be grateful for my problems.  I do have the capacity to learn from the hard stuff.  That alone sometimes is enough to be grateful for.