What a year, and what a summer!  Overwhelming, muddled at times, yet still with so much joy and so many blessings; so many opportunities for discernment.  You may have caught part of my musings of all this  in the post “Gaining Clarity”, but something I kept coming back to again and again this summer is this idea of feeling grateful and being gracious no matter where we find ourselves.  What an important and challenging thing to work on for ourselves,and for our children to see.

It can be easy to feel grateful when things are going well, and so much easier to be kind and gracious in those circumstances. However, how much more important is it for us to be able to see our times of more turbulence, whether outward or inward, as opportunities to express our gratitude and to show others how gracious we can be? Continue reading →