On being grateful and random acts of kindness

This post was selected to be part of the New Year's Eve edition of Gratitude Watch.

I'd like to thank CNN for promoting the value of gratitude.

My mother passed away, so I'm grateful to have had a 2 parent household. I'm grateful for my dad and pray he remains in good health.

I am grateful that I am in fairly good health and have a job.

I am grateful to the ladies who cared for my mother-in-law for the past several years. Through their efforts and especially my wife's strivings, her mother was able to spend the final years of her life in her own home (...for 61 years). Hug a caregiver he or she deserves it!!!

2008 has been a challenging and VERY medically difficult year for me.....and that was just the beginning.

I have fought Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for 9 years, but I am still alive and treatments are getting better. In March 2008 I had surgery. In June 2008 I was diagnosed with Graves' Disease of the thyroid. Full recovery takes about a year.

This past summer I was hit by a "hit and run" driver destroying my son’s car.

Two days later my oldest daughter and her family had to cancel their move back to Alaska (where I live) after being gone for 16 years.....because her husband was offered a promising promotion in the Air Force back east

My youngest daughter who lives here with 3 children – 2 of whom are in the Autistic Spectrum – had her Army National Guard husband deployed to Bosnia December 3rd.....for a year.

This past Sunday, the rear suspension on my car went out while driving on the highway and I partially lost control of my car. I would have been seriously injured or worse had I chosen the other route I had considered, to go take photos.

2008 was not particularly kind to me. However.....I am SO grateful for all that I have!

I am able to eat and walk and laugh and talk and spend time with my friends and family. I can experience the joy of my photos and art and appreciate the supreme beauty of a cold snowy day.

I am grateful because I have a warm roof over my head and food to eat and a measure of medical care.

I am thankful because I don’t live in a third world country, where my son spent time deployed this past September, transporting food and checking out medical facilities, after the ravages of several hurricanes.

After seeing these things and showing me the photos, he said he would NEVER, ever complain about U.S. medical care. After me seeing his photos....I will NEVER complain about not having enough of anything! We don't appreciate how well we have it here!

I am thankful I do not live in a country where war ravages everyone, but especially takes a toll on the poor, the old, the weak and the young.

I am thankful because I can see, hear, smell, taste and feel. I am SO blessed and MOST thankful, for caring, thoughtful, kind and very loving adult children and grandchildren and other family!

After a very difficult year.....I still can see how very blessed I am and it has taught me that I will still fight with every breath and reach for the sky with every ounce of energy I can muster and I WILL make 2009 a better year!

I challenge YOU to do the same and to "Reach For The Sky" and to NEVER give up.....no matter how hard things are. YOU have the power in your hands to change your life's attitude if you only believe and work hard. Even though you may not be able to change your physical body or maybe even your financial situation.....you can change HOW you perceive things.

So....GO FOR IT and make an attitude change for the better!!

Here’s to a better 2009 for everyone who had had challenges in 2008!!! Peace, Health, Love & Happy New Year.....God Bless!!

Anita

I agree with you more than you can imagine. My 16 year old daughter recently had a friend of hers burn in a horrific accident that is now being treated at Boston Hospital, Boston, Mass. The output of the community that has extended to this family has greatly impacted me. So much that when the family was overwhelmed with people asking what they could do, they asked for a blood drive. I just can't imaging how little this request became so huge. Not only was this family giving to the community, but they were giving to us as a community to allow us to help them. What a gift!!!! If you'd like to see the act of giving for this young girl from a whole community, just go to caringbridge.com and type in CaitlinBazinet and you will see the thousands of messages posted from the community for support for this family and this young girl. Your right act of kindness is so good for the soul, I would know I organized the blood drive for the family and the community responded along with her high school friends and collected 104 units of blood which means 314 lives were saved that day!!!!

I'd like to remind people not to forget our elderly who may not be sick but do need help now that they are older. My mother lives alone and luckily I have neighbors that check on her, shovel her driveway, and give her Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners if she's home and not visiting family out here in CA. After a recent snow storm her neighbor offered to drive her to the grocery store. Those random acts of kindness have not only touched my mother but myself. I try to pay that forward towards the elderly that live around me.

I am grateful for my 18 year old son,;David, who is severely autistic.
David reminds me and everyone else he meets that there is innocence left in this world. I would love to see a cure for autism and strive in this endeavor to find a cure. Yet, you most love a boy that laughs so hard without provocation and think he has got life right.
I am also grateful for his younger sister and brother who are so patient with him and have modified their little lives accordingly to compensate for their brother's condition.

GC

Prayer helps everyone to be more kind and grateful for what we have. Teri

I am grateful for the many dear friends and neighbors who have held my boys and me up in prayer during a very trying time in my life. The back half of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 have been very challenging emotionally and through their kindness and generosity, I have been able to endure. When most would have collapsed under the weight of all that has been laid upon me, their support has held me up and enabled me to continue on, day to day to day. I thank you all. I am blessed and grateful for such dear and wonderful friends.

This is a great post thanks for very useful information to share with us , I am thankful because I don’t live in a third world country, where my son spent time deployed this past September, transporting food and checking out medical facilities, after the ravages of several hurricanes.
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