My mentor, Sue Ellen, who is almost 80 now, who was married 50 years and who puts me in my place on a very regular basis in her loving, yet bold way, says that it is best for our brains to make a gratitude list each night, ten things at least, in order to wake up in a good mood.
Now you need to understand that 99.9% of my life before I began this practice I have woken up in a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mood. So to write this list each night has become, well, a necessity.
(I don't wake up with a rifle or anything, it's just this lingering pissation that I somehow pick up in the night and it generally takes three cups of coffee and about two solid hours for me to get over it. Not that my family even knows about it, but it's just- there. So the gratitude list friends is my saving grace.)
Here it goes.... Gratitude List January 18th, Year Two Thousand and Ten.
Number One. I am thankful today for a sense of connectedness to my neighbors and my community.
Number Two. I am extremely thankful to have had a mentor for almost a decade now who has been God's instrument of teaching me to love myself and to accept mine and others' faults and limitations.
Number Three. I am thankful for the experiences I have been given to find my own authenticity, my own voice, my own life.
Number Four. I am thankful to have been set free from the laws of religion. The closer I feel to God, the less religious I seem to be.
Number Five. I am thankful for my beautiful children who are turning my hair gray, my eyes black and my heart into gold.
Number Six. I am beyond thankful that I get to live in a piece of history, and that Henry Delk and his family left a legacy of peace, kindness and warmth where the walls speak in our 100 year old farmhouse.
Number Seven. I am thankful that God in his mercy has put the pieces of my marriage back together and is leading us into His plan for our lives, together.
Number Eight. I am thankful I live in the free-est country in the world.
Number Nine. I am thankful that I don't have to watch the 5 o'clock or the 6 o'clock Bad News.
Number Ten. I am thankful that Elvis shook his hips the way he did in Jailhouse Rock.
Goodnight friends. I'll let you know in the morning if this worked ;)
---Stacy
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1 comment:
It strikes me as amazing that Sue Ellen was such a significant part of my life in the '80s and now she is in yours 20 years later. What a gift. I love this list! I love that you're choosing this discipline. I love that your humor seasons everything you do and makes my heart smile. I have about the same way of waking up as you do. Maybe I need to do the list.
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