Attitude of Gratitude
When this whole Covid19 mess started, a couple of friends and I started emailing to each other 5 things we were grateful for during the week. We were locked down for what we thought would be a couple of months (we are optimists), and thought what a better way to not get discouraged, lonely, or lose hope. We could do it!! What’s a couple of months? 9 months later, we are once again facing lock-downs, isolation, and boy are our plans needing to change.
It’s a scary time. The charts of the cases spiking take my breath away. The number of people I know that have the virus are multiplying. My daughter’s stories (she’s a frontline worker on Covid19) are getting more dire and numerous. Holiday plans need to be brand new and different for all of us. For me, my children and I will see each other on our computer screens, my 89-year-old mom and I will chat on the phone. There won’t be big meals in which we gather and laugh, catch up with each other, solve the world’s problems, and break bread together. There will be no funny comments about my “one butt kitchen” (I have a very small kitchen and we bump butts when we work together.) There won’t be any hugging – and I think I will miss that the most. It’s not how I want to spend the holidays, but it’s the safest way we know. We want the opportunity to have many more holidays together, so we gotta do what we gotta do. This too shall pass.
Yet, every day, I still find things to put on my gratitude list. Some days I really have to think about it, but once I get in grateful frame of mind, my list grows and grows. I’ve discovered that most of the time it’s a small thing – like, I just moved and the other day a woman introduced herself to me while we were at the elevator. She made my new surroundings more home-like. Or, on my list this week was that there were Clorox wipes at the store – no germs left at my new place! I find, when I have the task of sharing a gratitude list, I have become more aware of the things happening in the present moment, I feel less alone, and I embody hope. I know that it’s a bad time – loss and grief are overwhelming, but there are so many good things happening, too. God is still speaking, working, and loving through all of this mess.
So, this week, in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m going to share my gratitude list with all of you. I encourage you to start your own list, it may help us all survive this pandemic.
1. I am so grateful that I have a community who prays and laughs with me.
2. I am grateful for the technology that allows us to be with one another, even only if it’s with eyes and ears.
3. I am grateful that when I fell the other day, I didn’t break anything.
4. I am grateful for the turkey in my fridge – and for the multitude of leftovers it will provide this year
5. I am grateful that God created me, loves me no matter what, joins me when I’m lonely, forgives me when I fail, and always keeps promises.
Happy Thanksgiving, my brother and sisters. Know you are loved beyond measure, treasured more than gold, and needed more than you realize.
Rev. Joan
