The words stung and then floated off into the universe.\u00a0 I was only in my 20\u2019s, attending a gathering of friends one night when a 4 year old said those seven powerful words to me.\u00a0 \u201cTake what you\u2019ve got and be thankful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wow!\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 It\u2019s uncanny, sometimes, what the tender trusting innocence of a kid can teach the most seasoned grown up. I had been complaining about something and she simply stated a lesson she had learned at church. \u201c Take what you\u2019ve got and be thankful.\u201d\u00a0 The lesson, taught to me by this young girl who probably couldn\u2019t even tie her own shoes, put me in my place (rightly so) and will forever stick with me.
\nIt is so easy to take what we have for granted; our homes, our jobs, our health, our safety, our loved ones.\u00a0\u00a0 I see people all the time who have forgotten what really matters.\u00a0 We look at our lives through the \u2018Negative\u2019 window.\u00a0 We see what we don\u2019t have, what we wish we had, what we are missing, or what someone else is enjoying, and we forget that there is another window.\u00a0 Through the \u2018Positive\u2019 window, should we choose to look, we see that we are very, very blessed.\u00a0 Granted, we may not have all that we want, but we do have all that we need.
\nWhen life has dealt us some blows, it is easy to sink inside of ourselves and wallow in our pain.\u00a0 It is almost impossible not to go there \u2013 at least for a while.\u00a0 But at some point, we have to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and force our stubborn, self-centered eyes to look elsewhere.\u00a0 There IS something to be thankful for, if we will only make ourselves look for it.
\nWhile those words were spoken to me over 2 decades ago, I am taken back to that moment from time to time.\u00a0 It is a good lesson for life.\u00a0 What are you thankful for?\u00a0 (Life?\u00a0 Health?\u00a0 Work? Shelter?\u00a0 Food? Nature?)\u00a0 Who are you thankful for? (a spouse who sticks with you even when you screw up? a good friend? your children? God?)\u00a0 What are you thankful you don\u2019t have? (Illness? Debt? Addictions? An empty space where your loved one used to be?)
\nYou may not have what you want at this point in your life, but you most likely want far more than what you need.\u00a0 I challenge you to try looking at what you DO have versus what you don\u2019t.\u00a0 You might just be surprised by what you see . . . and you might find yourself grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The words stung and then floated off into the universe.\u00a0 I was only in my 20\u2019s, attending a gathering of friends one night when a 4 year old said those seven powerful words to me.\u00a0 \u201cTake what you\u2019ve got and be thankful.\u201d Wow!\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 It\u2019s uncanny, sometimes, what the tender trusting innocence of a kid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1],"tags":[394,445,399,465,487,488,433,437,400,402,427,489,434,424,449,431,490,438,439,491,492,493,429,447,494,495,436,496,485,50],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4169,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions\/4169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}