Today I am grateful to witness love.  I stood up in my best friend’s wedding recently.  It reminded me of the love and excitement I felt on my own wedding day 15 years ago.  It was a reminder of love, period.  There is something incredibly powerful witnessing two people commit to each other and share their lives with one another.  Granted my friend has been with her partner for years so they were already deeply committed, but that doesn’t change the beauty of seeing them together and declaring it.  Marriage in the traditional sense was more about a contract and an agreement than it was about love, but the ability to change that meaning and make it about a personal commitment and a promise is a beautiful thing.  It’s even more beautiful to see people who are on the same page make the leap forward together. 

Today I am grateful for family—and the friends who become family.  Perhaps I’m just getting emotional and wistful at today’s events, but it is truly a blessed thing to have people together, people we choose to embrace us and who we embrace as well become people we can’t live without.  We are social creatures and the bond is so important.  We need to be seen and heard and embraced for who we are. Not that our identity or our esteem needs to come from other people, but we do need that support and encouragement.  It’s an amazing thing to think about the relationships we form at different stages in our lives and what people mean to us.  Those that stick with us are the most important people we can have around.

Today I am grateful for relationships.  Yes, I know I’ve talked about love and family already, but I want to talk about connection and the importance of relationships.  I’ve often spoke of connection and I think this is a timely reminder to evaluate the connection we have with ourselves, with spirit, and with each other.  Each type of connection serves a purpose.  The connection to self keeps us in touch with our purpose and our spirit and serves as a north star while the connection with each other shows us that we are not alone and that together we can do amazing things.  The purpose of connection is to share our gifts—we aren’t meant to do all things, we are meant to build things together with skills, talent, and interests that complement each other.  Forming relationships is so important for mind and spirit, it’s not about power and control over each other (which we often mistake relationships for), it’s about unity. 

Today I am grateful for the ability to travel.  Even though we were only a few hours away from home, I am grateful to have the means to travel.  Travel is something so impactful on our lives in the way seeing new things and new people and new ways of doing things can change us.  I am grateful to be able to see other parts of this country and to share them with my son.  Because this was only a few hours away, we drove and I love getting to show my kid different things.  It reminds me of traveling with my family when I was young and all the fun we had together sharing new experiences.  Like I said seeing new things and new ways of doing things is hugely important and it has always been important to me to be able to show my son different things.  There is never one right way and we only get comfortable with that through the experience.

Today I am grateful for flow and change.  I recently spoke with my husband that I felt stuck again, that we were just repeating the same patterns of 20 years ago.  We’re listening to the same music, making some of the same decisions (not always the greatest ones), having some of the same arguments.  The purpose of life is to progress and I know that everyone gets to a point where they feel like they don’t know what the hell they’re doing—we are definitely there.  Actually we go between total confidence and moving forward to having no clue.  It frustrated and angered me but I see now how common that is for people.  Sometimes I see that we end up in similar situations to our past so we can either handle the result of the decision differently or so we can make a different decision.  Sometimes how we feel about the situation determines the outcome, it isn’t always the action.  We don’t have to fear flow and change, and we have to understand that sometimes flow and change looks a bit like what we’ve been through before.  It’s ok to let go of the fear.  It’s ok to allow the present to happen as it is.  We are here for the ride, so take it as it is.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.