Attitude of Gratitude ...the little things...

The following 'story' is not mine. I credited the author at the end. Yesterday was one of those days where the 'little things' became big things and sure did get in the way of my gratitude. I am so very blessed. In this economy, I still have a job. I have a home with an affordable mortgage. I have two beautiful healthy wonderful children. My piece of crap car gets me to and fro! I have groceries in the pantry and in the frig. I am lucky to have the internet at my fingertips. I am resourceful and intelligent. I have just renovated an entire room with spending very little money ending up very impressed and satisfied at how much more organized and feasible the room turned out! My extended family is all near me in miles and healthy. I have the best friends in real life and online! They inspire me daily. I have more blessings than time to count them all!!!

I hope this will inspire you to 'count your many blessings'.

We get so caught up in the little things of life. We believe they matter, and to us they are so big. But others would feel fortunate to have our life situation, which we take for granted. In our day to day lives, we focus on negative mind chatter, and we fail to recognize our blessings, which stare us is the face.People are so involved in the story they create, they miss the big picture of life.

I walk into work. I listen to a co worker who is complaining about how she can not tolerate her job because our boss is so unthoughtful and unappreciative of us. She argues that we work really hard during the day, and she feels we deserve to be more appreciated.This woman is miserable because of how she perceives the situation we work in, which she views as "Intolerable”.

Personally, I feel our work situation is a blessing. I feel privileged to be there, and although it has its difficulties, I have learned to enjoy it no matter what. In reality these stories or perceptions that we create in our mind are irrelevant to the big picture of life.We tend to create negativity in our life and forget our blessings.

I work in a Dialysis access center, where we help people who have kidney failure. These individuals have to be on dialysis in order to live. Being on dialysis is a hard way of life, because they sit in a clinic 3 times a week for 4 hours a day for the rest of their lives. Many times their arteries and veins narrow and they are unable to dialyze, our services are their life line. We open up their veins and arteries so they can go to dialysis.

One morning, my co worker was complaining about the little things. The negativity of her story seemed to have consumed her. The more she spoke of her story, the more upset she became.The same morning, a patient arrived at our facility. The normal motions of our work began. After we worked on her, the physician realized we could not help her, her veins were so narrowed, she was barely getting blood into her heart. When we recognized we could not open up her veins. We put a catheter into her leg, which was the last life line she had available. When the doctor told her what was happening, I could feel the sadness in her presence. There was no sobbing, but tears rolled from her eyes.To me, they felt like tears of courage. She had dealt with this for many years. She knew that her life lines were running out. She had told her mother on the way to the center, she did not want this catheter.Then I thought about my co worker and her complaints. I realized how silly it is that we get so worked up over the little things.

I realized how truly blessed we are. We have our health and we have our freedom.Many of the everyday things we seem to get wrapped up in really do not matter. When we stress because our server forgot our ice tea, or we have to wait in a long line, or someone pulled out in front of us.Do these things really matter? No, they do not. They are just little things which prevent us from seeing our blessings in life, our blessing of health, our blessing of having food. Many are not fortunate to have what we take for granted. If we all appreciated our blessings instead of focusing on the little things we would be much happier. Author ~ Jennifer Kahtz ~