Monthly Archives: January 2016

After a lifetime of hardships and tragedies, including the death of my only son four years ago, I’ve had to work hard to keep a positive outlook. The last couple years have taught me to try to find something worthwhile, even if only a splinter of goodness, when things go terribly wrong.

The word gratitude for me stands for: “Graceful attitude.”

I’ve learned that when our attitude includes bits of thankfulness it somehow transforms an otherwise miserable situation into gratitude, and that very gratitude can help us find a miracle in every situation.

My version of looking for the silver lining.

The Monday before Christmas a huge section of my neighborhood experienced a power outage for about an hour and a half which doesn’t sound too bad, except that I was babysitting a 2 year old child, and each power outage means no community-well water (that’s country living). The power continued to go off, then pop on as many as 8 hours later until we went completely black for good December 23^rd. This time the power company predicted power outage for several days. A massive snow storm hit our heavily wooded Northwest area downing hundreds of trees, knocking down power lines, and leaving thousands of homes in the dark. Continue reading →