A Thank You Note to LIFE

gratitude, secular parenting

My life is so good and I love it so much that the way I live it is my way of saying THANK YOU ...to life.

Tonight I am overwhelmed with gratitude. 
Life isn't perfect and every single thing isn't shiny and white. But I don't need perfection and sparkles to be grateful to life, to our family, to my wonderful spouse, to myself. I am certain that happiness in life doesn't just happen. I think that gratitude makes life happier.

Even if it sounds weird, I have some things that I want to share with you that I am so grateful for. Some of them are so obvious, some less so. 

•  I am SO freaky grateful to have the spouse that I have. He and I are so well in-tune and we support one another so fully. We are incredibly different from one another and I think that it is those very differences that make us so well matched.
  I don't even think I could be married to someone like me.  ;)
  I am so grateful that I get to be married to him.
• I am so freaky grateful to my children for their incredible honesty, challenges, depth, integrity, strengths and weaknesses, curiosity, enthusiasm, deep love, struggle, effort...
• I am grateful for this gigantic seashell that my friend Maryvonne gave to me. Every. Single. Time I see it I feel a warmth and glowing in my heart because I know that it was given to me straight from her heart.
• I am sincerely grateful for my brain, no matter how poor my memory...
• I'm freaky thankful for our sun. Think about it for a moment. Our sun is life. Ditto our atmosphere.
• I'm thankful for the sun today, specifically. Here, during February, usually an icy cold time of year, we had springlike weather. I'm not grateful for climate change; I'm grateful for a respite from the freezing temperatures. My mood is improved.
• I have overwhelming gratitude for the internet.
  I truly have no idea why we have it, how we have it, how it really works, or exactly what it is. But I am massively in love with the ability to learnlearnlearn and to find wonderful community with amazing human beings.
• I am so thankful to my friend Lara for homeschooling; if she hadn't taken the road less traveled it is unlikely that our family would have even known about it. I am grateful to Lara for a million other things too.
• I am grateful for my life. I get to live it.

• I am extremely, extremely grateful that my husband's ex-wife is able to have a very caring relationship with us. I know that it is because of our deliberate work to keep things healthy that our family is as happy as it is.
  I love Jessica and Tim as though they were my very own. In fact, they are mine.
  I am overwhelmingly thankful for the words that my stepdaughter spoke to me tonight.
• I am exceedingly grateful for freethought, for freedom from idolatry, for the ability to see the Great Oz.
• I am grateful for the serenity and peace in our hearts in this household. I am especially grateful for this when someone needs to express intense pain, anger, confusion, loneliness, etc.
  Each of us knows that all emotions are welcome here.
• Though it may sound weird, I'm grateful for books. Really, BOOKS! What treasures they can be. What a beautiful thing they can be.
• I am grateful beyond words for our time in Australia and our time in New Zealand. Those lands have truly impacted us for ...ever.
• I am thankful for this moment, for my awareness of it, for its preciousness...

This world is so wondrous.
I wish more people could experience the sublimity, the inestimable beauty of life with gratitude.
Thanks, Life.

I hope you can look around you at this moment 

and find many things that bring gratitude to your heart.

Would you share some?

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