Gratitude

November is a time of gratitude. I have tons to be grateful for right now. In church on Sunday we had a lesson on gratitude. And they talked about having gratitude when times are tough. While I have certainly have challenges right now, compared to two years ago, it's easy to find things to be grateful for now. I'll be honest--I did not find much to be grateful for two years ago. I am not good at finding the good when times are tough. But better late than never, right?

Here's the challenge: we lived in the middle of nowhere. In a town of 90 people. And it was at least an hour drive to anywhere. I was a stay at home mom to one child with another on the way. But despite the challenges, there were some blessings.

- We had a huge house. With an awesome fireplace.
- We had a huge yard for our daughter to play in. And it came with raised garden beds, an apple tree, and a peach tree. Lots of room to run and play and fly a kite.
- We had an all-terrain wagon that made it through mud and gravel and snow. It was only half a mile to our downtown where we could walk to the post office every day. And on the way home we would stop at the market and get chocolate milk. And the town was small enough that the everyone at the market knew us.
- Our landlords were our neighbors. And they were the sweetest landlords in the world. In fact, everyone in the town was friendly.
- The bookmobile came to town every other week.
- We had to drive 1 1/2 hours to the doctor. But, my good friend from grad school lived in that town with her children who were born within a couple months of each of mine. So every time we went for a well child check up, we got to visit my friend.
- The fact that we lived so far from anything led us to do a home birth. Which I never would have considered. And turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life.
- We lived three hours from the airport. Which also happened to be in the same city that my in-laws lived in so we got to visit them whenever we needed to go to the airport.
- We spent a lot of time together as a family--whether it was because we lived too far to go anywhere, or because we had lots of time to talk on our long drives to anywhere.
- Every challenge we faced there, has taught me to be grateful for things I used to take for granted. Like stopping to get gas on the way home from dropping my daughter off at school. Or asking my husband to stop and grab something from the store on the way home from work.