Today I want to share a few things I’m grateful for because I think it’s important to look for the good in situations and choose to see the good – the things to be thankful for rather than looking only at the negative, which sometimes seems to be dominant at first glance.
My mother had a stroke a few weeks before Thanksgiving in 2022. She’s been in a rehabilitation facility near her home (and 2 1/2 hours from our home) since just after Christmas 2022. I won’t say I’m thankful for the stroke, I’m not. It’s been hard for my mom to be physically disabled and to have to learn to move her left side all over again. It’s been hard for my dad to take care of all of their many pets on his own. It’s been hard for my sister who has gone down most weeks to help around their place. It’s hard for me to see my mom and dad struggling.
While I am not grateful for the stroke, I am thankful that my mom is now home and doing well. I’m also grateful that we have this time with my parents. It’s been a special time of increased time together and increased closeness. Before the stroke we were busy, and my parents were busy and we didn’t get together every week like we have since the stroke. There was always some reason why “next week” would be a better time to visit. I’m thankful for the weekly visits and the extra time with my parents.
I’m thankful that mom has worked so hard and has recovered as well as she has and has been able to return home to my dad and the pets that she loves.
Yesterday, we started out to visit my parents as we usually do once a week. My husband and I were in the front seat of the van, and I was enjoying the moments of familial bliss. Hubby and I were talking, my great niece and nephew were in the back of the van playing with their Kindles and giggling at something they were watching as they ate donuts and drank juice. I was crocheting, working on a baby blanket for charity that was nearly finished. We were about 30 miles from my parents’ house when the car made a sudden noise like a flat tire and became difficult to steer. I’m thankful my husband was driving and was able to pilot the car safely across lanes of traffic to a nice sized shoulder where he could check the tires. The tires were fine, and my husband diagnosed the problem as a bad cv joint or a bad wheel bearing, neither of which is cheap to fix.
We could have chosen to focus on the expense, we could have chosen to focus on the inconvenience of being stranded two hours from home and a half hour from my parents’ but instead we chose to focus on the fact that we came to rest on a nice shoulder only a few miles from an exit with a clean, modern convenience store. I’m extremely grateful for my dad who put aside his own errands and recommended a car repair shop that he uses, and then came to rescue us. We were set to rent a car to come home after our visit, but my dad offered to let us use his van for the return trip.
We could have chosen to focus on the negative, could have declared the day a bad day, cut our visit with my parents short, and been grumpy and disagreeable with each other, but instead we both decided to look at the positives and to be grateful for the things that went well.
We ended up having a great visit with my parents. My parents got to spend time with their great grandkids (my great nieces and nephews). We shared a nice meal at a favorite Mexican restaurant in my parents’ small town. All in all, it turned out to be a great day and a great visit in spite of the car trouble, but it might not have been such a good day if we hadn’t decided early on to look for and focus on the positives.
I’m sharing this post at My Random Musings, Tell It To Me Tuesday, Tuesdays With A Twist, and Hearth and Soul.
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