A Reason for My Silence

Do you ever just come to the realization that the life you're living is not the life you want to live?  Does it force you to stop and make changes?  If so, will you impart your wisdom to me?  Because often I tend to despair.

To be clear, it is work that has me feeling so down.  I mean...how do you live a life you want to live when the money must keep coming in?  How do you make a change when jobs are so hard to find and this is so not the time to be jumping ship?

I have a feeling that possibly the answer might lie in a change of heart...a change of attitude.  I also have a feeling that those things are deeply connected to (1) being thankful for what you have and (2) giving of whatever you have to someone who doesn't...whether it's time, energy, money, encouragement, knowledge, laughter, service, whatever.  Each of us has something that someone else does not.

This seems as good as any a place and time (and month!) to insert a (sure-to-be-ever-expanding) list of things I'm grateful for.  My dad used to always say to a chorus of eye-rolls (we were teens, what can I say?)..."You've got to get an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE"  (So here's to you, Dad.)

• I am thankful for my family--for the parents who raised me and the sisters I have always looked up to (and not just because they have at all times been 1/3 - 4 feet taller than me).  I am thankful that the family I grew up with--sisters, cousins, etc. are so darn silly, brilliant and creative.
• I am thankful for my husband who has always seen something in me that I can't, and who believes that whatever that is (me, I guess!) is worth fighting for. 
• I am thankful--so thankful--that God is bigger than me...and yet even though my problems are minuscule in comparison, they are somehow strangely still important to Him.  (This must be love.) 
• I am thankful for Miss Maya Joon who makes us laugh hard, play outside, and make new friends every day...and who always welcomes us home with hugs and kisses no matter what kind of mood she's in. 
• I am thankful that cooler weather comes, even to Texas...and along with it come fat twists of wooly yarn, chai tea, toasty boots and scarves, Crock Pot dinners (with any luck), holiday traditions, Christmas lights, Jesus' birthday and a chance to start it all again. 
• I am thankful for the journey and all the people God's given me to share it with.  Honestly, I need to think of it more because when I do...it takes my breath away.  I am also thankful simply because it is a journey and at any given moment, I don't have to have 'arrived'.  Eternity has already begun as God loves me in this crazy process.

More to come.  Thanks to you who indulge me and my thoughts!