Gratitude

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challenges, courage, faith, gratitude, Helping One Woman Visalia, joy, life lessons, sharing

At last night’s Helping One Woman dinner I was pleased to win a lovely Gratitude Journal in one of the opportunity drawings.  It was a particularly relevant gift for me, because the HOW dinners themselves are such a lesson in gratitude each month.  As I have written before, the honoree at each HOW dinner is a woman who has suffered an irreparable loss in the previous 12 months.  And over and over, these amazing women demonstrate courage, faith, and even joy in the midst of overwhelming challenges and sorrows.  And over and over, they remind me of both how incredibly fortunate I am, and how quickly our lives can change.

I look forward to keeping track of the wondrous gifts I am given by life in my new journal, and perhaps sharing some of them here.

My lovely new “Grace of Gratitude” Journal by Deborah Perdue

The left-hand page is for journaling, and the right either holds a prompt such as this or an illustration.

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Love, limits, and protectiveness

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Anna Trebunskaya, Dancing with the Stars, family, Forever Tango, protectiveness, Visalia Fox Theater

Tonight my oldest granddaughter had her first real foray out into the world without us, as special friends from church invited her to a performance of “Forever Tango” at the Fox Theater, featuring Anna Trebunskaya from “Dancing with the Stars”.  This was her first adventure that didn’t involve other childhood friends and their family members, and it was grand!  It is lovely knowing that adult friends appreciate our young ones and choose to enjoy their company.

Of course, there were conversations ahead of time about how to act and what to do.  Being only nine, she needed to be reminded to stay with our friends at all times, to pay attention to her surroundings, not to go off to the ladies’ room by herself.  And her mother reminded her, as she does every time she goes anywhere with friends, that if for any reason things got weird and she was uncomfortable with the situation, to turn to the nearest adult she trusted and ask to call home or 911.

“You always tell me that,” she said to her mother.  Of course we do.  We want it to become second nature, not only now, but when she is a teenager and runs up against peer pressure that goes against her better judgement.  We can’t always control the world, but we can prepare her to meet its challenges.  When I brought it up again at the last minute in the car, she said, “You sound just like Mom.  And the adults we can all trust here are Terry and Sandy.”  And, of course, she was right.  But what she didn’t realize was that we were trusting Terry and Sandy with her, one of our greatest treasures.

I can hardly wait to hear every detail tomorrow on the way to school.

 

My “One Little Word” for 2016

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clarify, One Little Word, purify, refine

Following the tradition I set for myself last year (doing something once with intention can become a tradition, right?), I have again chosen “one little word” to guide my actions throughout 2016.

After considerable thought and soul-searching, my 2016 word will be “clarify”.  Clarify has two lovely definitions that should suit me just  fine for this year of change:

1.  Make (a situation) less confused and more clearly comprehensible
2. Melt (butter) in order to separate out the impurities.

Synonyms include “purify” and “refine”, both wonderful things to do with my life this year.

What will your “one little word” be?