Be Grateful

Be grateful for…

Be grateful for the skies of blue that smile from day to day;

Be grateful for the kindly friends that walk along your way;

Be grateful for the health you own, the work you find to do,

For round about you there are less fortunate than you.

Be grateful for the growing trees, the roses soon to bloom,

The tenderness of kindly hearts that shared your days of gloom;

Be grateful for the morning dew, the grass beneath your feet,

The soft caresses of your babes & all their laughter sweet.

Acquire the grateful habit, learn to see how blessed you are,

How much there is to gladden life, how little life to mar!

And what if rain shall fall today & you with grief are sad;

Be grateful that you can recall the joys that you have had.

–Edgar Guest

A Legend of Gratitude

There is a legend about two angels who were sent to earth to gather up the prayers of mankind.

One was to fill his basket with their petitions and the other was to gather their expressions of thankfulness. Some time later they both went back to the heavens.

One had a basket heaped high and running over with the innumerable petitions of men. The other returned with a sad and heavy heart, for his basket was almost empty.

The thanks of men were heard rarely on earth, even though the angel had searched diligently.

Let us not forget to express our thankuflness in our prayers.

Feel good when things are good?

Here is something that I read a few days ago that was so inspiring and uplifting. I’m not exactly sure where it originally comes from, since a friend sent it to me, but the message was very well put. You know how sometimes you can read something and it’s will be just what you need at the time, or help you see things in a new light, or even give you some good advice to a problem you’ve been struggling with, well this kinda did that. Optimism is a great thing but courage to stay optimistic in a difficult time is extremely admirable.

“It is relatively easy to feel grateful when good things are happening and life is going the way we want it to. Even then, we often take things for granted. It feels so good to take a moment to express our appreciation to other people, to life.

A much greater challenge is to get in touch with gratitude when we are going through a difficult time, or life is not going the way we think it should. At these times, we are more likely to be feeling hurt, confused, or resentful. There have been times in my life when I felt more like shaking my fist at the universe, wondering why it was dealing me such a cruel blow.

It’s interesting‚ though, that after going through a difficult time, in retrospect we can often see that there was something important and necessary about that experience. We may not arrive at this perspective until months or even years later, but eventually we can see that there was some important lesson learned, a deepening of our wisdom, an awakening, or perhaps a new door that opened in our life as a result of events that seemed negative at the time.

For example, the loss of a job may have led us to spiritual or emotional healing. The ending of a relationship may give us the opportunity to discover that we need time alone‚ or it may pave the way for a more satisfying partnership. At that point, we may begin to feel grateful that life unfolded as it did.”

All Occurs For a Reason…….

“All occurs for a reason”, such a beautiful phrase but also seems to be one of the hardest phrase to personally believe or accept when facing difficulty, lost, and disappointment. To be honest I’ve been going through some personal heartbreaks of late, that are too personal to post here, but what I can say is that it’s been a bit like one of your worst fears coming upon you and then not really knowing whether it’s here to stay or it will pass, but all the while waiting in agonizing limbo.

It’s been a real struggling. Sometimes it’s hard—no, almost impossible, to keep on going, taking that next step to make it through the day. I feel at the best of times I’m just running through the motions–a zombie, sorta. Though I’ve heard that “there is always a light at the end of every tunnel” or “the darkest hour is just before dawn” it just doesn’t always look or seem that way in reality.

I think that if it weren’t for the love and mercy of God and His angels of comfort, and the promises in His Word—which gives me the faith and hope to meet these challenges, I’d just be overwhelmed by the weight, the negativity, and despair of it all. Now I don’t want this blog post to spread despair and hopelessness to you. I’m pretty sure that everybody has enough troubles of their own without needing to wade through someone else’s private negativity. So that’s why I wanted to post these beautiful lyrics that really put some interesting perspectives to disappointments and nonsensical occurrences. I mean if you look at troubles in the positive, the way the lyrics below bring out; it certainly takes the edge off the monsters of despair and hopelessness which try to undermine your happiness, faith, and sanity.

If you are going through any personal tragedy in your life right now, I totally feel for you especially after battling myself through some recent long and lonely trials. If sorrow, injury, loneliness, loss, heartbreak, tragedy, death, sickness, confusion, hopelessness, suffering, deprivation, or anyone of the myriad of difficulties of life are crushing down on you and threatening to take everything good away from you—don’t’ give up hope. There is Someone who cares for you and loves you–Jesus, the greatest and most wonderful, loving spirit of light, who loves you more than anyone else in the whole word can and will help you if you need Him. Call out to Him and He will answer you. Trust me He is there in your darkest night. Keep hope alive. Don’t give up the fight. I hope this poem below will encourage you in some special way. You can also listen to a the song at this link:

Rhyme of Life.mp3–Net Radio

Rhyme Of Life Lyrics

If every thought that came to mind came true,
What kind of world would it be?
If every promise sworn by man was kept,
What would divine words mean to me?

If every chance to succeed had gone my way,
What personality would I have today?
If my first romance had granted me life’s every passion,
Would I have ever crossed your way?

Looking through the book of my life,
Turning pages of passing years,
I see a perfect rhyme throughout my life line.
Through the good times I hold dear,
And through my heartaches, through my tears,
My life has moved in time to the Creator of the design.

If every kiss had promised something more,
Would I have ever felt let down?
If my every desire had ended in satisfaction,
Would I still be satisfied now?

If my every dream had become reality,
What would I be dreaming of today?
If every wish I’d wished had come to be,
Would I be happier today?

I take from life all it has to give, given by the One for whom I live.
All occurs for a reason,
And for this reason I live a life that was given to me to give.
Through the good times I hold dear,
And through my heartaches, through my tears,
My life has moved in time to the Creator of the design.
Music & lyrics: Andrew V., Katrina L.

Did God make a mistake?

Here is a link to a longer article on my blog that spells out, in rather humorous terms, the absurd and sometimes contradictory way God often works His wonders in our lives. So you thought God was a stuffy old being that usually hung out in a religious building…..hahahahah, you suck! –JK. Read more to find out! Remember: to hell with the “proper way”!

http://thehappypill.wordpress.com/did-god-make-a-mistake/

Click on the link above.

OMG, I just crashed my car……

sCREECH, bANG, sMASH, ….cRASH!

That’s when it all started. Only seconds earlier I had been on my way to perform as a clown for a children’s benefit show on the theme of “Road Safety”. Ironic isn’t it, I should have a car crash on that day.

I was driving our NGO’s little utility van, following behind one of our other company vehicles. The car I was driving is a tiny Japanese Suzuki bug of a van called a “Bolan Hi-roof”, hardly fit for a tall Caucasian like me to drive. I was driving a little too close to our other vehicle in front of me and when he slammed on the breaks I pushed what I thought was the brake pedal and somehow or another ended up getting my foot stuck between the brake pedal and the accelerator pushing both at the same time. To add to the problem the brakes where already not working so well and due for repairs.

So instead of instantly stopping, the van and I went sailing into the back of the other van I was following behind. Heh heh. Kinda stupid isn’t it. At first I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I was kicking myself for this terrible piece of bad luck I had just gotten myself into. I started to think of all the terrible consequences of having a fender bender on the road while driving a company vehicle. I was pretty bummed out and negative about it. Usually I am a safe driver and in the last 4 years since I started driving I’ve never had an accident or even a minor one.

Well to make a long story short, I remembered about my goal to stay positive on my blog and I was like “great here is a good first test”. So after thinking about it, mind you wasn’t easy, but eventually I came around and thought of some things I’m can be grateful for inspite of my crash. Here they are:

• -I’m thankful, that I crashed into our company car and not some other private vehicle. We have insurance so it covered. My superiors and colleagues were surprisingly civil about it, which I’m so thankful but I did imagine what it would have been like had it been some else.
• -I didn’t hit anyone, people, animals and every creepy crawly thing crosses the road here in this part of the world, plus being a foreigner in this country (a third world country) would have been pretty bad.
• -Neither my passenger nor I were injured.
• -We recently attached a strong bumper to the front of that old tin can van, and it helped in absorbing the impact and protecting me and my passenger’s feet and legs.
• -The accident has made me less cocky and over-confident in my driving which probably means I’ll drive less aggressively and take fewer chances, thereby driving safer.

That’s a few things that came to mind but I’m sure there’s more if I really think about it.