Giving thanks

Tis the season... For hectic-ness, crammed parking lots and over consumption of calories!

Or at least that's what we've made it out to be.

But really, this should be the season of gratefulness. Not that gratefulness should be for a season, or one specific reason (rhyming is maybe intentional).. But if anything, the thanksgiving/upcoming Christmas season should serve as a reminder. When the world gets overwhelming and life is flying faster then the pumpkin latte orders at Starbucks, I am thankful for the reminder to be grateful and to give thanks.

This thanksgiving, I want to give thanks for the opportunities that have come my way and the ones that never did; I want to give thanks for my Santa Barbara family but also my San Diego one; I want to give thanks for the job(s) I have; the people I have met; and as simple and maybe cliche statement, I want to give thanks for the life I am able to live.

They say that the secret to happiness is living with an abundance of gratefulness. Melody Beattie wrote the following: "Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow," and I couldn't agree more.

Quote of the Day 11/04/14

We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.   [C.S. Lewis] 

Quote of the Day 10/27/14

“Sometimes God’s power is shown as much in preventing things as it is in making them happen.” [Lisa TerKeurst]

Quote of the Day 10/24/14

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”   [Melody Beattie]

Quote of the Day 10/21/14

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”  [Timothy Keller]

Quote of the Day 09/18/14

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”  [C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves]

Quote of the Day 9/17/14

"To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.”   [Brené Brown]

Fear

Let me tell you something about fear.

Everyone carries some form of it.

Fear of failure.

Fear of pain.

Fear of rejection.

Fear manifests itself in many different forms. And fear manifests itself in each one of us.

Fear is hard to define. What exactly is it? It's an emotion right? But why do we feel it? Why does it happen? Is it something internally that we feed until it grows into something more than nervous butterflies and sweaty palms? Is it a product of our imagination? Does it actually need to exist? Or is it a problem we create for ourselves that transitions into a reality we start to accept?

I don't actually have the answers to all those answers. But maybe acknowledging personal fears is a start to figuring how to live without them.

I have a journal that I write in every Sunday. I write bits and pieces of what is on my heart and my mind. I had gotten off track and felt compelled to write the other day. In writing, I admitted honestly that I have a fear. I have a fear of being hurt. 

Quote of the Day 9/16/14

“To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees – these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But, I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude and grace.”     [Brené Brown]

Quote of the Day 09/07/14

"It’s quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don’t do it."    [Jean-Paul Sartre]