Gratitude Reflection Day 17

A week ago I was relishing in a time of quiet ease. The busyness of life, job interviews, Advent preparations, Bishop visit preparation, and Christmas stuff, had subsided and I was enjoying some peace and quie. I experienced a distinctive lack of "things to do." I allowed myself to enjoy that time. In fact, whenever I have these lulls in my life I make an intentional effort to settle into the peacefullness because I know that all too soon life will be full and intense.

Sure enough, a few days later life was moving at full speed. Much of that intensity revolved around the labor and birth of the babies. But it included the need to get some Christmas shopping done. In the midst of all that busyness I lost my glasses and my husband lost the gold cross I had given him years ago. I don't remember exactly when I gave it to him, years ago, and he was upset to have lost it, somewhere in the far SW while we were travelling. My glasses I figured were around somewhere, it was just a matter of finding where they had managed to fall or get placed.

I think it is really easy to get lost when life is moving at a fast pace. To lose ourselves in the busyness, to lose our time with God, our time to pray, our time to find that place of peace which grounds us. I know it is for me. Losing the cross and the glasses were just a symptom of the busyness and discontectedness of life. The difficulty really is finding the time and means to slow down and be present to the moment. To enter into a place of being grounded once more.

Last night, after a long day of Christmas shopping and a lot of driving around the metropolitan Chicagoland area, I arrived home at 10:00pm. I sat with my husband and had a bowl of peppermint ice cream and a cup of tea. I opened my email and to my great delight found one from a person I met in the SW. It appears that the cleaning person in the hotel we stayed in found the cross. She is mailing it to us. And then later I found my glasses, under the bed beside my nightstand.

So today I am grateful for things found. I am grateful the cross was found. Grateful for the honesty of the person who found it...that kind of thing never happens in Chicago, at least not in my experience. And grateful I found my glasses, which will save me a trip to the eye Dr and the cost of new glasses.

And I am grateful to once again look into a space of time with very little on my schedule. I have a few things to do at church to prepare for Christmas. And I have some gifts to wrap. Not much. It will be a simple Christmas, but I'm ok with that.