My favorite paternal aunt, Merris, is here from my birth state, Iowa, visiting me for a couple weeks and I’m totally preoccupied, exhausted, excited, and I might as well throw in anxious, because I have a newsletter article due and haven’t a clue as to what to write.  But I do my best to be in integrity and keep my commitments, so I think I’ll just write about what’s foremost on my mind… gratitude.

It’s not that everything is hunky-dory and smooth sailing all the time, but I know I live in choice as to how I look at every single thing that happens in my life and I choose to see the cup half full and continuing to fill!  But I’ll get to that in a minute…

For starters, this is the aunt whom I had met only once, briefly, in the 1970’s.  Many years and a couple dozen address changes later, a Valentine card – a sweet, loving, old-fashioned Valentine from an aunt who had loved me since the day I was born (mind you, I didn’t know anyone had loved me when I was born) – found me.  We began to write and she invited me to visit her and Uncle Fred, and in a stroke of genius, I decided to do just that.  What a gift I gave to myself!  Now, because she decided to make her first flight on her own having recently lost her husband of fifty years, I get her all to myself for two whole weeks.  Country miles worth of gratitude, I tell you!

Aunt Merris and I have been hitting the Gem Show pretty hard the last couple days and as a result of so much walking and standing, my knee is super swollen and I pretty much hurt everywhere below my waist.  I cried myself to sleep last night from pain, and then gratitude. Yes, I hurt, but I had experienced so much pleasure in the company of my aunt as well as hundreds of other rock hounds!  We had both found some great deals on little treasures that made our hearts sing.  (And having shattered my hip and wrecked my back in ’04, I am so happy that I am able to walk and stand at all, let alone for hours at a time!)  To heck with pain, I feel grateful!

And there were little things today where I chose gratitude over grumbling:  We need rain; I would love to show Merris a lush, green Tucson vs. brown plants and dust everywhere, but until the rain comes, I’ll bask in the soul-warming February sunshine and let it soothe my body.  Then when leaving the gem show, we found ourselves trying to merge onto I-10 into crawling, bumper-to-bumper Friday rush-hour-gem show traffic, and voila! – a kind man let me cut in front of him – thanks, dude!  There was the jam-packed Costco parking lot (barely needed to go there as I only needed two items) when a spot right by the door opened up…I thanked God right out loud.  Silly little things?  Maybe, but I’d rather bank a bunch of gratitudes than a bunch of gripes.

Life is as good as I make it.  Are there ruts in the road and occasional roadblocks?  Sure, but if I continue to find the good in what may appear to be otherwise, it becomes otherwise.  Today my life is truly very good, and I attribute this to maintaining an attitude of gratitude.  I’m especially grateful for what surprises most assuredly lie around the corner!  Because you know what? – it’s gonna be good.  How do I know?  Because Good is already present and I am just saying yes to it!

“Every day and every hour we are meeting the eternal realities of life, and in such degree as we co-operate with these eternal realities in love, in peace, in wisdom, and in joy – believing and receiving – we are automatically blessed.” — Ernest Holmes, The Science of Mind 154.1

–Renee’ Mezzone