Lessons in Gratitude Day 181

I am grateful this evening for traveling mercies, for a safe, relatively uneventful day of travel. I am a bit weary and had to pop tylenol throughout the course of the day for a nagging headache, but I am back in California plopped on my bed writing my blog at my usual time. It’s been a relatively nonstop day beginning with a last morning of hanging out with my brother’s family, saying goodbye to my sister and her family as they headed off to the airport this morning, before heading out myself at noon. I had been a little worried that the snow that had begun falling early that morning might interfere with my travel plans, but the weather did not cause any delays this year as it has in years past. The flight took off a little late, and I arrived in Chicago just in time to get to the gate where my flight to San Francisco was boarding.  When I arrived in SF and got to my car, I went straight to pick up Honor where she’d been boarded and finally headed home. There was an accident on the freeway so getting home took a bit longer than usual, but I finally made it.

I return home with a mixture of relief and some anxiety. Relief because no matter how much fun I had and how great it was to see everyone, it’s challenging living out of a suitcase and being away from home. Anxiety because I’m coming back to quite a few questions marks in my life, uncertainties yet to be sorted out. I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep tonight so I can get up in the morning and begin to formulate a plan  for some of the actions I want to take before the end f 2011. Mind you, I’m not going to put a lot of pressure on myself to have everything figured out over the next three days, but I want to get creative and outline some thoughts and a semblance of a plan for moving a few things forward during the first part of the new year.

So I am grateful to be back home; grateful for a home to be back to. So many people don’t have this most basic of needs. I am warm and safe and comfortable. I pray for all those who are not so fortunate. I am thankful to have been able to spend five days in the company of loving family celebrating, playing and laughing together, enjoying one another’s company. I pray for all those who don’t have family or friends to cheer them, support and comfort them, to love them. I am grateful for those moments throughout the past week when I’ve smiled or laughed and experienced moments of pure pleasure. I’ve definitely experienced moments of sadness, grief, anxiety, and depression and pray for all for whom moments of peace and pleasure and joy are rare. I think about compassion and loving kindness and offer prayers for all of us that we might be free from suffering and know joy and happiness, health and wellbeing, safety and protection, love and acceptance. May we know all these things. Let it be so.