Finding breath and beauty amidst the storm

Tag: gratitude

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Gratitude…when you aren’t feeling it

Cody had a seizure Sunday night. His seizure-free period went from 51 weeks between seizures down to 10 weeks.

I’m not doing well this week.

I have so many things I want to write but what I finally decided on (what God recommended when I finally checked in with Him, maybe?) was a Lifeline post on gratitude. Because I’m not feeling very grateful right now.

Or maybe more accurately, I note little things here and there but I’m not really fully paying attention to them. And He wants me to pay attention to them instead of only paying attention to the sadness, frustration, and even guilt I’m focusing on instead.

Sadness and frustration about a chronic illness in your kiddo you can probably understand. The guilt is because my son is only having one seizure every 10 weeks. I know parents whose kids have that many by lunch. Every day. So, I feel guilty for feeling sad about something that in relation to others with epilepsy doesn’t seem that significant. Which of course I know my child having any seizures is significant but….and around and around I go.

So “gratitude” came to mind yesterday. Really focus on it. Watch for it, even search for things for which to be grateful. Not to pretend the bad doesn’t exist but to lift my gaze to the light shining all around me even in the dark.

Things like…

What are you choosing today?

A few months before Cody was diagnosed with epilepsy, a friend told me about a book called One Thousand Gifts.  The author decided to try to record 1000 gifts from God in her daily life.  After reading the book, I started my own gratitude journal, keeping track of the gifts that God had given me the day before.

I have recorded at least one thing to be grateful for every day since then even when I didn’t feel like there were any.  While I have recorded considerably more than 1000 gifts, it hasn’t always been easy to do. Only now as I pull it out again do I even realize there is a subtitle:

Page 2 of 2

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén