grateful days

Jerusalem, at My Little Life, has challenged us to share what we're grateful for. So for the next few days leading up to Thanksgiving, I'll try to join in her fun. So often the doom and gloom of our daily lives, get in the way of enjoying life to its fullest. And although it's okay to feel the pain, in fact necessary to work through it, it's also okay to recognize it for what it is and move on.

Which leads me to my first grateful moment. I'm grateful to be 55 years old! Ha! I bet you weren't expecting anything like that! My reason for being grateful that I'm on the downhill side of my life is that with age comes wisdom. With age comes the ability to "let go" and to live life with less stress and more joyfully. By now we've gathered the tools to deal with difficult times and life's challenges easier. We can find humor in actions that in a previous life would have caused us grief. We learn to pick our battles and accept what we cannot change or have no control over. I guess that's the biggest accomplishment: accepting what we have no control over.... which is just about everything in life. I'm grateful for the peace in my life and, for me, that came with age and wisdom.

My husband has been repainting our downstairs. Another grateful moment.... I decided this would be a good time to add some wainscoting to our library room. (I call it "library" because I don't know what else it is. It's the room before you go outside to the back deck...) First, all the books had to be removed from the bookcases (and dusted off) so we could move the bookcases away from the wall and paint behind them. Days later the books are still in disarray waiting for the wainscoting to get done so I can put them all back in place.

It dawned on me last night, in the middle of the night when I was awake and worrying about a multitude of things not worthy of my worry.... that I didn't want wainscoting on the bookcase wall so my project for today is to return all these books to their rightful spot, by subject, in this empty bookcase.