The holiday season is always a time of reflection for me.  Perhaps it's the moody, grey weather or maybe it's that the year is reaching an end and it's easier to look back and see the many previous months as a unified event.  As I prepared for the newsletter this month, I found myself slipping into that familiar reflective mind-set.  What did I accomplish this year?  What are the lessons of my struggles?  What does this season really mean to me?  What does it mean to be grateful?

I believe that gratitude is a perspective.  I read once, in a book that changed my outlook, that all thoughts were choices and that what we think we ultimately create in our lives.  In this way of thinking, the choice to want creates the reality of need.  And the choice to give thanks creates the reality of abundance. That seemed so foreign to me when I first discovered it. But as I look back at the year behind me and ahead to the one about to be born, I realize that I have come to embrace that truth. 

I am fortunate in that I have been exposed to many different cultures and disciplines.  But greater than diversity, I have found inter-connectedness.  There seems to be a common thread that runs through all things that hints at this way of living life.  It comes to mind now that perhaps the most familiar of all statements proclaiming this promise is “ask and you shall receive.”  But that sentiment is echoed in many places, in many ways around our world.  I see it in the turning of nature, the confident growth of plants, the happy return of birds.  Maybe that sounds a little abstract or old-world poetic to you.  To me, it is a hand outstretched offering help that is free and unconditional.  And I am grateful for that.

When I am grounded in appreciation, I realize the gift I am to the world and the gift it is to me.  I am humbled by how big life is and how unexpected it is to be invited to be a part of it.  My struggles then can seem like triumphs.  My hurts are trimmed in joy.  And my worries feel foolish and passing.  That is the message of this season to me; to witness the miracle unfolding all around me and to revel in it as I was created to do.