When the alarm started chiming at 5:30 am I had to force myself out of bed to hit the snooze button. One foot at a time thudded onto the twenty year old gold carpet of my bedroom. I wobbled a bit, found my footing and trudged to the bathroom where my phone alarm cycled through it's chime.I've plenty of reason to grateful and not bitter. Half full or half empty? I've written about this before and I made a choice to look at the positive, the bright side, the encouraging side of life. It makes a complete difference in how you look at life events and come away from those happenings a better person.
Twelve years ago, I went through a week of excruciating pain. A pain that I couldn't get doctors to understand was real. More than five days I spent trying to get a handle on the pain that was lodged in my head. Three trips to the emergency room, a couple of cat scans. Preliminary emergency exams revealed nothing. On Friday of that week, I woke up with a knot on the right side of my head the size of a ping pong ball. I had to go see my primary care doctor for a blood test that day to see if I could retake a medication I had been on before all the scans. When the docs saw the lump, they freaked out and sent me back to the ER. They were concerned, worried, maybe even a bit afraid.
When I saw the lump on the side of my face, I was thankful. Thankful that now someone would believe me when I told them I was in pain. I was relieved the pain that they all thought was in my head was now visibly in my head. They could see what I'd been feeling for days.
Yes, I was thankful.
I spent the next several days in the hospital while I recovered from an emergency surgery that was only surpassed by a heart-lung transplant.
During that time in the hospital, my family visited, two to three times a day. My husband was my advocate while I was in la la land, zoned out from the painkillers they gave me.
Eventually, the doctors and the other powers that be deigned me fit to go home. I was grateful again as I came down from the drug-induced euphoria and realized who had been at my side.
I also realized who had not been at the side of the woman who'd had hip replacement surgery in the bed next to me. It was then I realized that perhaps, just maybe, I had been put in University Hospital not to get well, although that was a happy by-product, but rather to know there were people like my roommate who had no one to visit them. I made it a point to make sure to visit the shut-ins I knew. I could do more even now, but that foray into the hospital reminded me that there are people who are not as fortunate as I. I was taught a special life-changing, affirming lesson.
Fast forward a few months. I've a ear ache like none I've ever experienced. I had come out of the mountains from an elevation of about 7,000 feet to Denver, at 5200 feet. My ears plugged-up. My left ear popped, but my right ear didn't. The pain, once again, was intense.It kept me from sleeping well at night. About three days after my return my right ear finally popped.
I was grateful. The pain was over.
Unfortunately, my right eardrum had ruptured. I did not look at the rupture as a bad thing. For me it was a good thing and I was grateful for the pressure to be gone.
So, when I got up this morning and placed my bare feet onto that old, worn carpet, I wasn't thinking anything negative - I was grateful. You see, I've spent the last three months with a cast on my left foot. A week ago, the doc took off the cast and put me into a hard plastic boot. The boot can be removed at night. and when I get up in the morning, I can feel the carpet against the sole of my foot, I can curl my toes against the carpet, and I can walk, albeit strangely, across the floor to the bathroom when I can hit the snooze button on my phone alarm.
I get up and am grateful. I walk and I am grateful. I have a roof overhead, and heat and water, and light and I am grateful.
I am grateful for clean running water.
Everywhere all around us are neutral events that we interpret as positive or negative. Negative only brings me down and when I'm down I impact those around me. I have a sphere of influence. It's not big, and I doubt I want the responsibility of a big sphere of influence. I have a small sphere, and I like that, and I am responsible for what I bring to the corner of the world I've been placed in. I want all the hard lessons to be positive ones. At the very least, my hospitalizations have taught me empathy for those whose shoes are similar to mine. My experiences are easily viewed through lenses of my choosing and I choose positive.
I am grateful for every experience I've had. I've become a better person, a deeper person, a more relatable person because of them. I've learned that it is easy to miss being grateful for the little things, and perhaps I'm not as appreciative of the big things as I should be.
I know I am incredibly fortunate to live where I do, in a place that is far better that a huge portion of the world.
Being more aware of the gifts I've been given, and the gifts around me are pivotal to my year of Dangerous Living.
a car that is six years old, a garage to park it in so I don't have to scrape ice and snow from the windows.
I am expanding and exercising my attitude of gratitude each and every day. I hope you can do the same.