Thankful for Contentment

You hear so much flack given to people who seem to complain about their lives all year long, and then find time to be thankful for things around Thanksgiving.  While I agree that it can be comical, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.  Sometimes people need something to remind them of the things they do have to be thankful for.  Isn't it better to be thankful when reminded to never be thankful at all? I think so.

I tend to be a pretty happy and upbeat person.  I am a huge believer in the power of one's thoughts.  I truly, TRULY believe that your thoughts can mold your reality.  For this reason, I like to try and be thankful for the blessings I have in life everyday.  I'm not saying I always excel at this, but I do always try.  I try to dwell on the positive and not the negative.  I try to think about all the positive things going on in my life, and not the massive amount of hospital bills we have from Benny being in the NICU.

Despite this daily quest to try and count my blessings whenever possible, I have lived most of my life with a feeling of restlessness.  I felt like I was always waiting on something.  Do you remember that feeling that you used to have as a child when December rolled around?  It was a feeling of anxiousness and excitement!  You were so excited for Christmas to come that every day leading up to it was just an obstacle you had to get through before getting to enjoy the bounty of bliss that arrived on Christmas morning.  For some reason, this is how I have felt most of my life.  I felt like every day was an obstacle I had to get through as I worked towards something else.  I felt like I was waiting for my life to start.  For almost 33 years, I had this feeling of discontent.  This feeling of restlessness.  This feeling of waiting for something, but having no idea what it was or when it was coming.

My own personal quote that lives underneath my Senior yearbook picture is, "Never spend today rushing tomorrow, or all your yesterdays will be a blur."  I thought I was pretty darn clever coming up with that.  I think it was my own self-fulfilling prophecy.

The moment Benjamin was born, this feeling completely went away.  I know it sounds cheesy, but it was honestly as if everything in my life was complete.  I wasn't waiting for life anymore, I was living it.    It is, by far, the most amazing feeling.  I am not saying I feel like my life is perfect, I am just saying that this feeling of restlessness, of waiting, instantly subsided.  Thank God for that!!!