We are coming to the end of another calendar year. It is a time of great celebration and thanksgiving for all of the blessings we have received and given over the last year. I love Thanksgiving. I also believe that every day is Thanksgiving. Not the eating vast quantities of comfort foods part, but the actual stopping to live in gratitude of everything we have.
I wasn’t always so happy this time of year. In fact, I was often anxious and busier than ever, working to close the year out strong. I was working day and night, holidays or not, to get business in the door. No vacation for me. I couldn’t spare it. I would work late on Christmas Eve and early the day after Christmas. I would have worked on Christmas Day if anyone had been willing to negotiate on that day, too. No stopping, no breathing and very little, I felt, to be thankful for, except the closed deal.
Maybe that is where you are right now. Maybe you are on the full court press as we wind up the year and the stress and anxiety are building and your energy is dwindling. Maybe you are not sleeping, so you have another nightcap to relax and an extra cup of coffee or an energy drink to help you power through the day. Sundays are the worst. That tension begins to build in your stomach, in your shoulders, in your throat. Work tomorrow and so much to get done, much of it out of your direct control. You were so fried on Friday that you decided to power it down and pick it up over the weekend. You stayed up late trying to relax and claim your freedom while you could and then you tried to sleep as late as you could to catch up.
That didn’t work so well. You put off that work from Friday and now it is Sunday evening. Ugh, how you dread doing it. How you resent that your weekends are not even weekends anymore. You really only have Saturday, and even then thoughts of work keep creeping in. You wonder to yourself, how much longer? How much longer will it be like this and when will I see the light at the end of the tunnel? That becomes too scary a thought so you start thinking in shorter and shorter terms. How do I get through this quarter, this season, this week, this day, this hour, or like I was, this next 30 minutes? Dear God, help me out of this! There has to be a better way!
Thank God that there is a much better way. Gratitude is a major part of that as part of the lovingME lifestyle. Thank God my prayer was answered and that now I also help guide others to find their better way. Thank God that my life is nothing like that treadmill I was on and I now live in peace, joy and gratitude, perhaps not every single moment of every single day, but pretty close. I am blessed. And I am full of thanksgiving.
