Gratitude

This day is hot and steamy and I am glad for it. Gratitude is a necessary thing but can often be elusive as we get caught up in our own minute details and allow these details to cloud our minds. We find ourselves ignoring the beauty and brilliance that surrounds us every day by concentrating on something irritating like say, the ant colony that I discovered moving up my arm while watering the gardens today. Or say, maybe the traffic and lack of parking I encountered at KU-Med and muttered disparagingly about on my way in to visit our friend Carolyn.....who's fighting for her life. We would give anything for Carolyn to be walking around complaining about heavy traffic right now. Why is it so easy to give in to bellyaching when I should be thanking God for every moment I or Keith or any loved one has right now? Aye, there's the rub....

I don't have any easy answers. I just have to take it a day at a time and ask for guidance from above and for patience from my loved ones (if patience is a virtue; Keith is the most virtuous person I know). I looked through some old photos that I apparently took so they could just sit in an archive and finally brought them out for show. These will be the display for today's effort towards gratitude:

I am grateful for that stunning double rainbow I witnessed a few months back taken at my job. I'm grateful for Keith's green thumb, his bountiful gardens and that blooming red hot poker. I'm also grateful for the vegetables we grow that survive the elements and the critters, such as these peppers that are pictured.

I'm most grateful today for the continued little bits of good news we receive about Carolyn. She is ensconced in her snazzy new digs at KU-Med and continues to be surrounded by family and friends. I am most grateful for Carolyn's husband Jim who is ever by her side. Jim is a master wordsmith and tells us in his Facebook updates of the latest and best reason to be grateful today. The following is in Jim's own words:

According to these neurologists, based on what they admitted was mostly geriatric data that has nothing to do with Carolyn, she has a 1 in 20 chance of a full recovery and a 1 in 3 chance of a "significant" recovery. Those same stats predicted that Gabby Giffords died last February. Today, twice, when I held her hand and told her that I loved her, that I adored her, and that I needed her back, tears streamed down her cheeks. She's still in there, trapped in a body she's training to respond to her will. And anyone who knows her has no doubt that, when she wills something, it eventually happens. By sheer coincidence, the deal that saved the Elms Hotel, which she worked night and day for 3 years to succeed, all the while ignoring a rising tide of skepticism, was formalized today. She is a woman triumphant, and she will succeed.

Amen and Godspeed. This morning, Jim has just announced that the heart damage wasn't nearly as bad as they feared. Keep those prayers coming, folks.

The video below is Coldplay's Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall. I've been listening to it all day. Carolyn's teardrops were a waterfall, after all.