One factor of blogging that’s been such a blessing is one tends to make blogging friends.
They are virtual friends in the essence that we’ve never actually met each other but friends nonetheless.
One such friend is Laurel Regan of the blog Alphabet Soup. Friends help each other, and in that spirit she has been trying to help me link to her site. There’s only been one obstacle: she only has a link up party (that’s blog speak) on Sunday.
The sweet girl that she is, she repeatedly sent me the link to her blog party, so bright and early this morning, I tried to link my latest post, my reaction to TIME’s year-end issue, to her site. Little did I know, it was a gratitude link up. I could only link a blog oozing gratitude, certainly not my TIME reaction in which I lambasted their choice of cover stories (http://wp.me/p5jxvv-6v 12-7).
Not wanting to look ungrateful to Laurel, here I begin my gratitude post. My readers who have followed my short but rewarding blogging journey know two-thirds of what I’m grateful for this year. Sure, I’m grateful for all the blessings in my life: my husband, my children, my job that I enjoy so much, my friends, family, and pets. However, there are three standout mentions that I’m grateful for in 2014.
1. My readers know I had a cancer scare in October (Heaven Can Wait, http://wp.me/p5jxvv-16). The amount of support from women (sorry guys, only women wrote with their cancer stories) was extraordinary. I am so grateful I don’t have breast cancer. With a small pain tolerance like mine, it would not have been an easy journey. A cousin once commented about cancer, “You don’t want it.” I didn’t want it, and I sure am glad I don’t have it as we begin a new year. I am definitely grateful for my health.
2. As my readers know from my Thanksgiving post, I’m grateful for blogging in addition to all my other blessings (What No One Tells You About Blogging http://wp.me/p5jxvv-2Y). As I continue on this path, I am meeting more and more bloggers. Recently, after reading my posts in which I insinuated Darren Wilson, the police officer that killed Michael Brown was racist (okay I came out and said it), a person wrote me and thanked me for bringing the issue of racism to light. I felt like a Crusader. I felt like Erin Brockovitch (Ferguson Decision: Right or Wrong? http://wp.me/p5jxvv-2y).
3. What my readers don’t know about that I’m over-the-moon grateful for as 2014 draws to a close is my husband’s mobility. I can be corny, sentimental, maudlin by saying that life can change in a second, on a dime, but 
cheesy clichés become clichés because they’re true.
Early this past May my husband, on a routine shopping errand, walked into a store, slipped on some liquid that the store owners neglected to mop up and severed his knee cap. When I said goodby to him as he left that morning, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I should have gone with him. Guilt for not joining him to help with the groceries when I was free to do so? A premonition that he would need me, and I should be by his side? One will never know.
I could not have been more carefree as I played on the computer when I got the call. An ambulance had been called; my husband was on the way to the hospital. It was the last carefree moment I would have for a long time. In what seemed like a fraction of a second later, we had a case worker, a lawyer, and, of course a surgeon.
My biggest concern, naturally, was that my husband’s mobility would be permanently impaired. The doctor assured me so casually that he would be fine, I didn’t believe him. Thankfully (and that’s what this post is about, right, why I’m thankful?) Wayne has continued to make steady progress thanks to a great surgeon and physical therapist. Wayne got lucky. As we walked down the hall of the examination room area, I heard a doctor tell a patient that her fracture did not heal properly. We, on the other hand, are one blessed family.
The title of my post is “How to Find Gratitude”. Can readers tell the answer by now? You find it in adversity.
Readers, what are you grateful for as you start 2015?
