Oceans of Gratitude

I don’t know how the year has gone so quickly. I’m sitting in my office looking back on things, and I’m filled with such a feeling of gratitude. I remember as the year began my prayer was to grow “deeper”. I didn’t quite know how that would look or feel. I guess we sometimes think that “deeper” has to be earthshaking. It hasn’t been an earthshaking year. It’s been a year of meaningful insights that just seemed to sneak up on me.

Talking to my brother Bob on the telephone one Sunday evening, I realized there was a new “easiness” in our relationship. He had been through his own “dark night of the soul” and in his recovery from his “demons”, there was an honesty between us that was new. I smiled with pleasure to argue with him now. It’s okay. Our relationship has gone deeper. Honesty brings more freedom in a relationship.

It’s been a year of people going out of my life and people coming back into my life. I still find it hard to let go at times. And yet, I’m learning to pause and be grateful for the gift each one is and has been in my life.

Relationships change, but the gift stays if you acknowledge it and accept it. Enjoying the now, letting go of yesterday and not grasping for tomorrow allows a joy to grow in our lives. Now I’m looking around with glee to see who else is popping into my life.

One of the insights I’m learning (and I’m still learning – aren’t we all) is to take a second and a third look at people. We’re such complicated beings. Our thoughts, feelings, reactions, beliefs all overlap in such myriad patterns. We are not what we appear to be. Sometimes we’re petty when we want to be great. Sometimes we’re great when we don’t even know it. It’s fun to untangle what we “believe to be true” and find another dimension to people and to ourselves. And then laugh at our “lopsided” view that caused us such discomfort and pain in the not so distant past. People are great. And being people, so are we.

This has been a growing year, a deepening year, and it’s not over yet. I’m filled with such gratitude for you, for me, for my God.

In the One Love We All Share,

Rev. Lisa