One Thousand Gifts

My cousin sent me this picture a couple days ago:

by Brian Andreas

Cute, right? Only things have been the pits for me lately, and I've noticed something about myself. I used to be super chipper and positive and optimistic and I tried to see the best in everyone and the silver lining in everything. 

Notice I said used to. 

I'm not so chipper and positive and optimistic anymore. I don't necessarily look for the best in everyone.  And I sure don't see the silver lining in much of what goes on in life anymore.

The opposite of that mean monster's story has been happening to me over time, and I'm turning into someone that I feel disappointed by. 

I want to see the best in everyone. I want to give them a chance, and to even develop a friendship with them. Yes, I make friends with people, but I sure don't give people second chances or try very hard to see things from a different light when I see them do something that I don't agree with. 

I want to see the silver lining in life. I want to take everything, the good and  the bad, and find a positive, happy takeaway. Something that leaves me feeling as though everything has meaning in it, and it's not all gloom if things don't appear as we want.

A couple years ago, my friend lent me this book by Ann Voskamp.

One Thousand Gifts

I was going through some awful stuff with N's father, and I cried all the time. It felt like life would never be okay, N was going to be scarred, I was scarred, the only thing I had ever wished for my entire life was never going to happen, my life had been ripped away from me, torn into shreds, and then went up in flames.

I was devastated. One Thousand Gifts was hard for me to read, but it helped me. I tried to actively look for the gifts in every day, in every moment, and it helped.

Grad school has been a nightmare for me. I'm still not even sure how I made it this far into the program, but it has taken it's toll. Anymore, I feel like all I do is moan and complain and whine about how it's so hard, and the program is awful, and I don't want to continue the program, and the professors are awful, and on and on and on. 

I have a hard time seeing the positive in anything anymore. Grad school took me and turned me into a monster! 

Well, after B sent me that photo (of the mean monster) and after I had sat and thought about it for a while, I decided enough was enough. The things and people in my life that make it hard, whether it's N's father, mean professors, difficult assignments/exams, long distance internships, anything, I am not going to let it take control of me. 

I will not be the mean monster's doppelgänger!! I will be me, and I will be kind, and thoughtful, and generous, and caring, and loving, and accepting, and turn-the-other-cheek-ing, and look-for-the-positive-ing, and silver-linings-exist-ing!

I'm going to journal my own thousand gifts, every day, every time I see one. Whether it's iridescent suds in the sink, fluffy toddler bed-head, a friend's laughter, a feeling of energy, satisfaction of being able to drive home, or the solid thwack of a shoe on a soccer ball in the yard. I will see the positive, and I will look for and hope for the best in everything.

And when I write my thousand gifts, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to keep on writing them.