"This our hymn of grateful praise..."

I know that Thanksgiving is technically behind us now,but I feel like every day is a good day to learn the true meaning of thankfulness. Today, I've been reflecting on how that lesson can be learned and applied in my current life.

I've been thinking lately about attitudes and how they affect our interactions with those around us. More importantly, I've been reflecting on how sometimes I do not choose to have the most gracious attitude with people because of the physical pain that I've experienced of late in my own life. I sometimes translate that pain into my interpersonal relationships, which is completely unfair and altogether not Christ-like.

In order to truly explain this lesson, though, and how I am learning it, I'll need to tell the story of my current life as it pertains to this post.

There's no place like home...

Have you ever had one of those days that is going so perfectly that you can't believe how wonderful it really is?

Well, this is the story of the other shoe dropping on one of those days.

Friday, Nov. 12, was honestly a great day. I had officially finished my practicum observation hours in TESOL, worked on homework, attended a great class discussion in Spanish with our guest speaker and discovered that I had a paycheck in my mailbox, all before 2 p.m. I found myself walking back to my apartment after class wondering how the day could possibly be any better!

In hindsight, I sometimes laugh at my own optimism.

If I could turn back time...

Have you ever wanted to just turn the clock back on a portion of your life? You know, hit the rewind button and record over that mistake you made or that word you said in anger?

Sadly the closest thing to turning back time that I've ever been able to accomplish comes once a year when the world returns to normal and Daylight Savings Time ends. Ironically and perfectly enough, that time is tonight (at least in the USA, that is). I'm actually typing this in anticipation of seeing whether I need to manually reset my cell phone clock or if it will handle the change on its own (as so much technology seems to do lately...who needs humans anymore? But that's a completely different topic).