Nov 4, 2014

Gratitude November 2014 Day 4

Sometimes I surprise myself. I found this writing I did last year on November 23. It made me stop in my tracks. It seems apropos to repost it for my Gratitude writing today:

Gratitude Day 23: Tonight I need to purge my mind for a few so please allow me to do so here. Sit back, relax and read. Hopefully it won't be too out there ;)

Anyway...I had an odd day today. In my mind I had it all planned out: go help Andre clean his restaurant; eat lunch; get my granddaughter Destiny; go to the mall; get nails done and shop around a little and go home. All went as planned till I got done with my nails. Then an unexpected opportunity arose to go to far south Broken Arrow to get a surprise for my daughter and granddaughters. Did that and on the way back got a call from Andre at the restaurant to run to the store for him to get some last minute items for tomorrow's Route 66 marathon breakfast downtown where he works. So I hauled ass back to Tulsa got his stuff and ran to Sapulpa and gave my daughter and granddaughters the Wii game system I got for a steal. They were thrilled with it! Then I took me and Destiny out to eat. Whew!! What a long crazy day!

I finally got home a little while ago and I realized I hadn't written my Gratitude thing today. Those of you who know me realize that I don't like the word gratitude. I especially hate meetings that have the topic of gratitude for discussion. The main reason is because most of the crap people say they are grateful for (me included) has nothing to do with gratitude. I mean who isn't grateful for material success? Anyway like I said, I was thinking about what to write on my list today because I made a commitment to myself to do the Gratitude thing every day this November whether I liked it or not.

So, I was soaking in a hot bath thinking about my day. It occurred to me that even though my day was different from what I had planned, it was ok. That's not normal for me so I realized something good has happened inside of me. Maybe a little bit of selfishness has died...well one can hope.

Then my mind went back to thinking about about gratitude. I drifted back to a meeting I was at one day years ago. The topic was gratitude. I was sitting across the table from a friend of mine named Dewina. I will use her name now because she's in heaven with the angels. She was blind and she had a leg amputated, all from diabetes. I remember sitting here trying to think about what I could say I was grateful for. I heard myself think, "Boy I'm grateful I'm not in her place! At least I have two legs and I can see." Then a voice as loud as a megaphone went off in my head (I assume it was God). It said to me, "WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH GRATITUDE?!" It stopped my thinking in its tracks. I realized being "grateful" I didn't relapse like that person or have cancer or some other crisis like someone else was nothing more than being selfish and judgemental. If I'm truly grateful then my actions will show that. Gratitude is not a feeling it's an action, a verb.

I sat there that day and I watched my friend Dewina laugh and share joy and love with everyone. I remembered when I met her the first time at a meeting with my best friend whom I sponsored at the time. It was one of her first meetings. She was one of those women that I thought was hopeless and could never make it. Yet here she sat all these years later; still sober in spite of all the physical hell she was going through. Still doing all she could to bring joy to people. And I realized what a blessing it was to know her. She died a few months later.

I wrote a poem after that about gratitude. It was inspired by Dewina. I have been so blessed to sit in meetings day in and day out for years with the most beautiful spiritual giants I have ever known. Dewina was one of them. So tonight I am posting the poem at the end of my diatribe that I wrote, in honor of Dewina and countless others that God has blessed me with on my path. I am forever indebted to them for my sobriety.

GRATITUDE

by Andrea Tadpole

Gratitude is not all the flowery words we say
Or how good we look on the outside
It's found in the silent places
In the stillness of our hearts
It's seen in the small unnoticed things we do for those in need
It's in the art of listening
In shouldering someone's burdens without reward or accolades
True gratitude is not a nostalgic feeling we have when we look to our past
Its a choice we make to love the unloveable
Those we meet along God's path before us
Gratitude is an action
A response to the grace God has given us
And evidence of the miracle
He has wrought within our hearts

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