What are You Grateful For?

My friend Abbie sent me a book to check out. The Magic by Rhonda Byrne. I was only into it about 37 pages when I came across this quote:

I had to put the book down and look up the quote. First the sceptic in me wanted to see if it was a legitimate quote of Tecumseh’s. Tecumseh lived from 1768 to 1813. He was a Shawnee Native American leader. This quote resonated deeply with me.

Gratitude has been an important part of my spirit for as long as I can remember. I think my parents instilled it in me. I’ll have to check that observation with my brothers to see if their experience was the same. I frequently heard, “Be grateful for what you have.”

Usually said whenever I would talk about what someone else had that we didn’t have in our home. There was a lot we didn’t have because of my father’s construction accident when I was ten years old. My dad was thirty years old when he had his accident.

Growing up I often heard from other people, sometimes extended family, or other adults, “You are poor.” I remember my grandmother Hudkins saying this to me. I was probably eleven or so. My memory is that I got very angry and said to her, “We may not have money, we have love, so we are not poor.”

I don’t know when I consciously began the practice of giving thanks and listing my blessings. Gratitude begats gratitude. I am even grateful for some of the crappy things that happen as in, “Thank you universe for teaching me this lesson.” That part of my gratitude practice is courtesy of Joe Coehlo. He looks at failure as learning and it has rubbed off on me.

The part of the Tecumseh quote that grabbed my attention, even more, was “If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies with yourself.” Powerful words.

Life will deal everyone a bad hand at some point in their lives. That’s a given. How we deal with it is our choice. My experience has been that people who are normally grateful fare better in coping with the tragedies in their life.

An attitude of gratitude is one of my mantras.

Can you name one thing you are grateful for today?

I’ll start, I am grateful that I have a daughter willing to have Joe and me in her home for an extended period. Thank you, Megan.