Sunday, January 24, 2010

Counting my blessings…















Morning!

No matter how things are going in our lives they could always be better, but it sometimes takes a tragedy to make us realize they could also be worse. Just put yourself in Port Au Prince right now and I think you will get my drift.

I met a woman a few years ago in the Dominican Republic. Her standing home structure was about the size of two tiny rooms and a new cinderblock structure was being built around it about two maybe three times the size. She showed me her home with great pride and talked about what was to come with a glad heart. Her pride in her tiny garden that had a growing lemon tree and mint leaves shone in her eyes.

She went out of her way to welcome us. She had black sweet coffee, a Dominican favorite, and offered us some. Not wanting to put her out in any way, I thanked her but declined. Later on, we talked a little more about coffee and I mentioned that I liked milky unsweetened coffee. My husband told her he only drank tea. We continued to talk with her husband while she excused herself and moments later appeared with a hot cup of milky coffee for me and tea for my husband. She had slipped away to borrow a can of evaporated milk from a neighbor and picked leaves from her garden for my husband’s tea. Tears still come to my eyes when I think of this. I made a pact from that day on that I would always be hospitable to unexpected guests and never think of my home as not enough.

We do that often in our lives without thinking. We feel that others have so much more than we do. Better homes, better husbands or wives, better jobs, better lives. Our want lists get bigger and bigger, making us always feel dissatisfied with what we have. We find ourselves always looking to the next big thing that we can get and then wonder why it still doesn’t make us happy when it’s in our hands.

Stop and take a moment to really appreciate all of the things in your life right now. I mean really take the time and look at everything with a new eye. Appreciate that you woke up on the right side of the dirt this morning. You are breathing. You are here in this moment. So many people in Haiti are so very thankful today for just that, so ask yourself, “What could I possibly be complaining about?”

To help the people of Haiti:

Yele Haiti
http://www.yele.org/
To donate $5 --Text “Yele” to 501501
To donate $10--Text “Haiti” to 501501

American Red Cross
http://www.redcross.org/
To donate $10--Text “Haiti” 90999

2 comments:

  1. I love this story thank you for sharing it. We often forget how important it is to appreciate the little blessings in life.
    Realize the wonderous gift of having senses. Sight, touch, sound, taste and hearing are things we take for granted. Every day we awake expecting that we will see the blueness of the sky, hear birds singing and smell our moring coffee. Imagine for just one minute not having any of our five senses, how would your life be impacted? Complaining about the mundane would be less and less apart of your reality and a waste of energy. But when you arise each day thankful and filled with joy just because you opened your eyes and your vision was intact, you are on the road to understanding the grace you walk with and the miracles that are created in you and around you all the time. So count your blessings no matter how small they add up to great miracles.

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  2. Thank you Deena!

    That is so beautiful and so true.

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