Gratitude Practice 2020 Day 288: Seasons
Grateful to live in a climate that has four distinct seasons. The sweeping white snow drifts of winter prep the soil for the boozy bright blooms of spring. These vibrant colors welcome each determined and resilience summer meadow. Every playful summer sky will eventually bow and curtsey with grace to makes way for the moody reflectiveness of crunchy autumn leaves. This pattern. These elements forever dependent and entangled generate perpetual forward motion from the now to the next to the almost and then to the eventual one day soon.
Grateful for warm snow boots and steamy mug of hot spiced cider. Grateful for my open toed strapy sandals and slushy tangy lemonade from Sonic. Grateful for trusty rubber flip flops formed and shaped specifically for my Fred Flintstone toes and for bottomless containers of chilled ice water where endless beads of refreshment race to the bottom of the glass to flood whatever surface it can touch. And grateful for my reliable and forever comfortable black Dansko clogs which frequently carry me to the nearby 7-11 to purchase the world's most delicious (and most affordable) gas station hot chocolate.
Grateful for this most recent, most exciting, most dynamic and most challenging season of personal growth. Grateful for the frustration, for the anxiety, for the depression, for the big conversations and heartfelt prayers. Grateful for the sacred sifting of perceptions and priorities and perspectives. Grateful for the saving grace of good to the core people, for the relentless proving and pushing and pricking. Grateful for the focus and for the fight, for the breaking moments and for the beautiful ones. Grateful for new concentration, for the sacred consecration, for my newly acquired curiosity, for the companionship of creativity and for countless moments when God's eternal goodness just shines so bright.
Grateful for the hard won truths, for the hard conversations, for the hard decisions, for the hard work and how all of the hard is somehow ever so slowly becoming holy. Grateful for the despair that is becoming determination, and for the pain that has become both purposeful and powerful.
Becoming more grateful for all things 2020 with each passing day. Grateful for the seasonality of growth and for the completely personalized curriculum this year has provided. I am beginning to see both purpose and pattern inside a year so full of relentless adversity. I am more aware and more alert to the reality that each high and every humbling low has been and will continue to be carefully strung and sewn together with nothing shy of God's divine handiwork.
Grateful to becoming more grateful with each passing day for this season of stretching and for all that it is teaching me.
