Thank You for this Wonderful Life

I Haven’t Been a Good Friend to You

Dear God,

I have realised that I haven’t been a good friend to You. I seek your company and Your guidance when I feel lost or unhappy, yet when everything is going well I barely give You a second thought.

I run to You in an emergency, I pour out my problems to You on my ‘bad’ days, and I expect You to be there for me every time I feel unhappy or unsatisfied.

And yet, I never thank You for the passing of all the beautiful days You give me. I forget to tell You how happy I am to have passed an interview, found a new home, or made a new friend. I take it for granted that the sky is blue and that the sun is warming my skin. I am blind to all the miracles You perform in my every day life.

I am beginning to realise just how much You do for me. Today, You reminded me to take my umbrella, because You knew it would rain; You whispered poems to the trees, which swayed to the rhythm of Your voice as I walked past. You cleared the clouds to help our tomatoes ripen in the sun, and You gave me ten minutes to drink my tea in stillness and in silence.

I am sorry for having taken You for granted for so long, and I am sorry for having been such a selfish friend. You have continued to give me love and care, despite my ingratitude; You have continued to give, despite not receiving anything in return; You have been loving me unconditionally.

I thank You for everything, and especially for helping me realise my ingratitude.

I promise to be a better friend to You from now on.

All my love,

Your (selfish) friend

Twice as Blessed

In the past few months I have been extremely blessed to have received a whole 3 different blog awards!

Thank you to Patricia for the 7×7 Link Award, and I apologise for not having had the time to write about it earlier! As part of the award, I am sharing links to 7 blog posts that I most enjoyed reading recently:

1. A Solution to the World’s Energy Crisis by The Power of Slow

2. The Only Thing We Can Do by Rewriting Life

3. Why Believing in Yourself is More Important (and Less Cheesy) Than You Think by Courage 2 Create

4. Fresh Quotes: JULY (Truth) by My Life in Colour

5. We Have Decided to Stay by The Bloom Studio

6. A Woman of Strength by Petals and Pearls

7. Taking a Cue from Mother Nature by Bennis Inc

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Thank you to Jennifer for the Inspiring Blog Award!

I nominate the following 5 blogs for the award:

1. The Power of Slow ~ Slow Down to Live it Up

2. Shining Soul Yoga ~ All Things Yoga, Wellness, Food and Fun

3. Courage 2 Create – This is the story of me writing my first novel… and how life keeps getting in the way

4. Based on a True Story – Changing the World One Smile at a Time

5. Lady Fi – It’s Not What You Look at That Matters, It’s What You See

I am extremely grateful for these truly special awards and I feel blessed to be able to share my blog with you.

♥ Love ♥

A Game of Tag

A while ago, Kate from The Phoenixplains invited me to join a game of tag, to which the rules are as follows:

1. You must post the rules.
2. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged.
3. Tag eleven people and link to them on your post.
4. Let them know you’ve tagged them!

So, Kate, here are the answers to your interesting, although at times difficult, questions:

What one ‘need’ and one ‘want’ will you strive to achieve in the next twelve months?

Need: find a new job.
Want: find a job in editing/writing which fulfils me and in which I can learn many new skills.

What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?

At the moment, it is not other people’s judgement that is preventing me from doing certain things in life, but the financial means to do so. I would love to take a yoga teacher training course in Costa Rica, for example.

What three words would you use to describe the last three months of your life?

Challenging, confusing, instructive.

What makes you weird/interesting/different?

I always look at the time when the numbers are matching, for example at 23.23.

If you could do it all over again, would you change anything?

No, because I learnt a lot from it all!

What small act of kindness were you once shown that you will never forget?

It was a situation in which a sick person was paying more attention to the health and well-being of those around her than to her own situation. Her deep care and altruism brought tears to my eyes, and I will never forget that even when we are in difficult situations, we must nevertheless continue to show love and care to those around us.

If you were forced to eliminate every physical possession from your life with the exception of what could fit into a single backpack, what would you put in it?

Apart from the essentials, such as basic clothes, money, a mobile phone, toothbrush etc., I would also put in my backpack my camera, my favourite jewellery, a pen and notebook, a poetry book, a few photos of my family and friends, playing cards, an address book and an umbrella.

What have you read online recently that inspired you?

In this post I discovered an amazing French song (video with English subtitles below).

If you could take a single photograph of your life, what would it look like?

Front plan: my sibling and I sticking out our tongues to the camera. Background: my mum and grandparents in the garden, looking at us and laughing.

What are you most grateful for?

The wonderful family and friends I have.

What is the simplest truth you can express in words?

Everything is perfect, even the shitty parts.

***

Here are my own 11 questions:

1. What books have changed your life?
2. What project would you start if you knew you couldn’t fail?
3. When I say “time”, you say……
4. Which well-known person is an inspiration to you and why?
5. Which motto or theory do you love but find difficult to put into practice?
6. If you could introduce a new subject to be taught to school-children in your country, what subject would you introduce?
7. What activity always lifts your spirits and puts you in a good mood?
8. What is the most challenging thing in your life at the moment?
9. What are your favourite three quotes?
10. Is there a song that captures your views/beliefs/thoughts on life?
11. Which fellow blogger would you like to meet in real life?

I tag:

1. A story of Light
2. BA Expat
3. Based on a True Story
4. My Life in Colour
5. The Sister Hawk Blog
6. 6 Months to Live
7. Shining Soul Yoga
8. Life as I See It
9. Love is the Answer
10. Walter Bright
11. My Sardinian Life

Looking forward to discovering your answers!

Today, I am Grateful for…

A good night’s sleep.

Morning jam, morning biscuits.

Living in a place where it is not stressful to do shopping.

A refreshing walk in the rain.

Being surrounded by kind, thoughtful and open people.

A clean home.

Receiving a wonderful e-mail from a friend.

Laughter.

What are you grateful for today?

Wait, hold that thought. Go get a gorgeous notebook, some colourful pens and set aside ten minutes to write.

To write your daily gratitudes.

We all have things to be grateful for. But they often go unnoticed, overshadowed by all the negative things that happen in our day. If we start paying attention and appreciating all of the good things that happen to us – however small they may be – our vision of our daily life transforms. By recognising and focusing on the positive, we improve our mood, our health and our energy.

“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 Beady

Some days, we may only have one or two things to note in our gratitude journal; other days, we may fill two pages. But there is always something to be grateful for, even on the greyest of days.

So go on, start that gratitude journal.

I was inspired to start my own gratitude journal after reading SeaSweetie’s Pages.