Let’s have gratitude for all our encounters. . .

It’s not easy to be grateful for some of the people we encounter on our journey, at least not initially. I very recently experienced this lack of gratitude. Even after years of being on this spiritual path, believing in all the principles I share with others, and having more than thirty-six years of recovery, I was confronted by a series of experiences with one person that unsettled me a great deal. The details aren’t important. What is important to share is how easy it is to forget that God is always our comforter in every situation. I have been a steady practitioner of this idea for decades, and yet, I felt ill at ease. I found myself relieved when she didn’t show up in places we both had previously frequented. I had broken one of my own cardinal rules: I was giving her rent-free space in my mind. I was letting her presence or absence contribute to how I felt.

The only way around a situation like this is to seek to see the lesson inherent in it. For me, the main lesson was to remember that, as in every other relationship or even minor encounter, we had made a “pact” on the “other side,” one that was promptly forgotten. I think the lesson for me was to listen, to witness, but not to get into someone else’s problem or to try to find their solution, and perhaps more important, not to be swayed by someone else’s perspective. Reserve judgment always. Preserve healthy boundaries always.

Being grateful for every experience doesn’t mean we have to love each experience or the person with whom we are sharing the experience. Being grateful is to accept that we will, in time, see the good in the experience. I surely wasn’t grateful when my first significant boyfriend didn’t want to marry me. Nor was I grateful when my first husband left me for another woman. However, the blessings I have enjoyed since surrendering to the will of God far exceed any of the good things I was sure I would miss out on if I couldn’t keep my first major boyfriend and then my first husband as my hostage.

The value of making a gratitude list can’t be overstated. I really didn’t have much faith in a gratitude list when I first started keeping one, but I did it anyway. I had heard from so many that it significantly reframes how life looks. Indeed it does. It also is a way to thank our Higher Power for the experiences with which we are blessed. Even though many of them aren’t to our liking initially, if we wait patiently, we will discover the inherent lesson of the experience. How long has it been since you made a gratitude list?  Is today a good day to begin another one?