Grateful Heart

I didn’t get to post last Sunday because we were driving down to Florida for our couple getaway. But I when I was reflecting about what I wanted to blog about today, I thought about my trip and all I could feel was immense gratitude, which is fitting since that’s probably what I would’ve written about last week after Thanksgiving. I have a lot to be grateful for. There are obvious things that this trip brought gratitude to the front of my mind- grateful to my mother-in-law who drove twelve-plus hours to come watch my kids for a week. Grateful for Andy’s good job that made this vacation possible. Grateful to my friends who stepped up and did carpool this past week so that mom had one less thing to worry about. Grateful for a week to relax and disconnect from all the responsibilities I normally have. It was a wonderful time of connecting with Andy without all of the extra stuff we normally have to juggle. But more than all of this, when we were in the Dominican Republic, we were told that our excursion was canceled. They discouraged you from doing anything that wasn’t an insured excursion, because the DR is full of violent crime and they couldn’t guarantee safety nor could they guarantee you’d make it back to the boat in time, so we were bummed that our excursion was canceled, but we made the most of it. We walked around the port that had been tourist focused. It was basically like walking along the Boardwalk at Myrtle Beach– many of the same stores, in fact. I would’ve loved to see a bit of the real DR, especially the waterfall hike we had planned, but mostly I felt really bad for the people that lived there. Their country is so poor that many resort to violent crime to be able to survive. I am so grateful that I live where I can be like “oops I forgot to lock my car last night” with no real consequences. I know I take it for granted sometimes. I think a lot of Americans take the freedoms and safety that we have here for granted. On our cruise, we sat by a bunch of different people every night. On the last night we sat by a gentleman who was on his 48th cruise this year alone. He said he’s been pretty much cruising since he retired 8 years ago. There was a lot of interesting things he said about his lifestyle choices that gave me a lot to think about, but he mentioned that he wanted to move to Europe where there was better healthcare. I’ve never lived in Europe, so I honestly can’t attest to the healthcare one way or another, but since I’m married to a doctor, I sometimes get a bit of an inside scoop, and he has heard the opposite when it comes to healthcare. Basically, if you have money, healthcare might be better in Canada or Europe, but if you have the standard universal healthcare, it could be months and months before you are seen and then when you are, it often isn’t with the most qualified doctor. While capitalism has its faults, it generally helps provide for a competitive world where when you are successful in a field, you can pretty much guarantee they’re qualified. This gentleman also said that Mexico had “phenomenal healthcare” which I know for a fact isn’t true, given that Andy’s personally seen many patients that had procedures done in Mexico only to have to run to the ER in America because of major complications. I think often times we don’t know what we have until we don’t have it anymore. I think this is why gratitude is so important. There have been many scholarly studies done to show the benefits of gratitude, but I have experienced a literal change in my physical and mental health when I made it a priority. I see a trend in our world where people want to be the victim, but this promotes a sad outlook on life. I too have caught myself comparing or competing instead of stopping and being grateful for what I have been given and the outcomes from the comparison stop me from progressing, leave me feeling down and frustrated, where as the contrary builds bridges in relationships and helps me focus on my individual growth.

That leads me to the deepest gratitude I have in my heart. It is only through my Savior Jesus Christ that in my darkest times, I found the strength to push on and become a new person. It is because of His atonement that it was possible for me to become stronger, better, happier. I am truly grateful for his Sacrifice and all that that had blessed me with. Every good thing in my life can be directly linked to Him and my choices to follow him.

Thanksgiving was a blast. We were invited to our friend’s house, the Secrist’s. We played kickball in the church parking lot, then ate dinner around 2 at their house, followed by dessert and games. It was a great time! The week of Thanksgiving was a bit of a whirlwind for me, because I was cooking, prepping for grandma to take over, preparing for our trip, getting things ready for our primary program, and getting started on Christmas. I honestly was surprised I got it all done. I was so busy on Saturday, because I hadn’t packed yet, that I wasn’t able to hang out with mom as much as I wanted to, but she found things to keep her busy. Andy and I left after church on Sunday and were on the boat on Monday morning. I’ll include a slide show to catalog the trip. I went ahead and put the patch behind my ear as a preemptive measure, but that thing made me drowsy and eventually took away part of my vision where I couldn’t see anything up close. I took it off at that point and didn’t have any motion sickness but it took me about two days to fully gain my vision back. I guess now I know! Both excursions on Turk and then the DR got canceled due to weather, but we made the most of it. We went snorkeling in the bay and ended up seeing some pretty fish as well as a yellow leopard eel. After that we got ourselves some lunch, then napped on the beach– something you can’t do when you’ve got kids with you!

The kids did really well with Grandma while we were away. They said they only had a couple of schedule issues, and one was really my fault because I wrote the time down wrong. Grandma set up cookies for the kids to decorate. She even left a few behind that she decorated herself. They’re already almost gone. My kids are some of her number one fans. I heard from my kids, my neighbor, and grandma that they all had a blast together. I honestly didn’t worry about them at all; I knew they were in good hands. I did miss them though!