Today I am grateful for completion.  We’ve had the main level of the house under construction since March.  It’s been delay after delay, lesson after lesson, and frustration after frustration.  I can keep it in perspective and acknowledge in the grand scheme of things, this is not a huge issue.  I would be lying, however, to say that there was no impact on us mentally.  Having your house in some degree of unrest for any length of time is a pain, but to have the entire thing torn up and shifted over and over again and to have plans pushed aside and rerouted unexpectedly multiple times is wearing on ANYONE.  So this past week we received the last pieces of our project and we have been able to start to put things back together.  The relief is immense and I am so grateful that we can make some progress getting things where they belong.  It’s also awesome to see a vision come together like that.  I can’t say that the wait was worth it because 90% of the delays had nothing to do with us but I WILL say the vision is spot on and it is beautiful—it took time but it got to where we wanted it.  And I can breathe again.

Today I am grateful for surprises.  We’ve been invited to a conference for our business.  We haven’t been able to attend the last several years for various reasons but we received the invitation, and because we are gluttons for chaos, we accepted it.  Truthfully, it will be chaotic, there is no denying it, but this is a huge gift and we couldn’t have anticipated this.  This is an opportunity for us to really get things off the ground and make huge strides for the business and for other connections.  This is a networking gig unlike any other and I am so happy we have better awareness of what’s to come and what we will do moving forward.  This is a chance to move things forward in our lives and I am so happy to keep that in perspective. I wouldn’t be able to do this without my current role, without the changes I’ve made over the last few months.  I am proud, I am excited, and I am ready.  The time is right.  This is one of those moments that proves things happen when they are meant to.

Today I am grateful for family.  There are a lot of dynamics at play right now and I am learning to simply take people as they are.  We often don’t realize how much we expect people to live up to our standards.  I’m truly not speaking in the malicious sense, I’m talking in the way we think people are, we think we know them because they’ve been a certain way for a long time, and suddenly they are this different person.  They no longer fit the mold of how we knew them.  It’s an adjustment and it can be painful but the roles we play with people change.  I’m grateful my family is around no matter what role they have in my life.  I love that I still get to see their names come up on my phone, that I get to hear their voices.  It’s a gift.

Today I am grateful for finding peace.  I never realized what a journey it would be to find peace.  It sounds like such an easy thing—just be peaceful, allow peace, stay away from what causes unrest.  Buddhism talks about life being suffering and how we can’t avoid it but we have to work with it.  Because of suffering we know what joy is and because of unrest and disturbance we know what peace is.  Life will never be smooth sailing all around.  It will never be easy all day every day.  But what we can do is find a way to create peace in ourselves.  We can find a way to manage peace with who we are because when we find peace with who we are we know we can handle anything.  Peace is an acceptance, that’s really all it is. It’s a knowing that no matter what comes our way we can handle it.  I’ve allowed myself to be rattled for too long and that isn’t a place that feels good.  For me it’s almost instinct to find the negative/fear/unrest because there’s a compulsion to solve things in a way, to find purpose.  We find peace when we know our purpose because the rest of the distraction goes away.  So in a way, peace comes not only with acceptance, but with focus and action (more detail coming).  Taking steps and moving forward gives us peace because we have a direction and that makes all the difference in the world.      

Today I am grateful for purposeful action.  Conceptually I’ve been aware of purposeful action my entire life—we have a purpose and we do something about it.  In practice, that didn’t work so well.  Between distraction and people pleasing, we lose sight of what matters at times.  I’ve also never been a person who could do one thing at a time.  Multiple goals, multiple projects, and things to do—the goal itself was to complete as much as I could.  Part of that was natural interest and curiosity—I have interest in a variety of things.  But jumping from thing to thing gets us nowhere.  I am grateful to be reminded that sometimes slow and steady wins the race.  We can’t drink out of the fire hose—sometimes we just need to slow down and prioritize.  At some point we realize that there are no mistakes and we end up exactly where we need to be no matter what we do.    

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.