Counting Our Blessings

My friends, one in particular....  laugh at me because I am so organized and actually enjoy all that entails.  This particular friend I mention is hard wired in a completely different way, which I fully appreciate and return in jest ten fold.  Perhaps its funny that I love making lists.  I love the smell of the school supply aisle! I love sharpening pencils, finding a great pen and don't get me started about highlighters.  That's the best part! Marking through the stuff on my lists.  My friend thinks the time I spend making lists could be spent actually completing something on the list.  But, she doesn't rise at 5:00 a.m.  What a productive time of day! I sit with my favorite coffee mug, and jot down my goals for the day.  They are much more attainable sorted on college ruled paper by priority.  There are many lists.  The typical to do's...  most requiring my chauffer skills, getting us to our appointed places for the day... school, work, sports, etc.  The sidebar including things not to be forgotten, money for a gazillion things at school, permission slips, props for theatre class presentation, papers for this and that, and the list goes on.  I have a list of things to buy.  This includes necessities and things I simply Want.  Funny, how writing what I want will most often find those items getting scratched off the list without purchasing them.  It gives me time to think through my purchases...  how badly do I want it?  Do I actually need it?  Where will I put it?  When will I use it?  What would we go without if I indulge?  I have a list of songs I need to buy.  Yes, I said NEED.  Music is simply necessary, period.  I have a list of places I'd like to go, books I want to read, people I need to write.  I have a list of goals.  I read it often and many times find I am incorporating a postive new choice or habit and its off the list and part of my lifestyle.  I have one really great list....  100 things I want in my partner.  Its not to 100 yet.  I learn things and they end up there.  All of these things are also things I aspire to be myself.  My latest list inspired this post.  I found myself on a perfectly beautiful day, nothing particularly wrong... in a puddle on the floor crying my eyes out.  No, you weren't invited.  Pity parties are for one...  Boo hoo.  I appreciate a good cry, however, I picked myself up and thought, "Get over yourself! You are Blessed."  And I set to making a list.  Sure, we all know the things we are blessed with, the short list of things we daily take for granted.  Our health, families, friends, cars that run, paychecks, functioning body parts... We are thankful for them, but probably don't list them in our prayers as often as we should.  So that's a good place to start to get the tears to stop.  But what if I kept going?  What are all the things in my life that are right?  How many times would I have to sharpen my pencil if I really got serious and wrote down my blessings?  So, without listing them here, I can tell you it is a long list.  It is a list that will continue to grow.  I became so enlightened and lifted that I found myself putting things on the list that I had actually cried about and cursed being in my life.  You know all the things you ask, "Why? Why me? Why now?"  Things that made me sad.  But what if a particular loss is indeed a blessing?  Hmmm....  What if everything that has happened to me was on this one list?  A list of blessings.  Blessed through and through that each moment, tear, laugh, brought me to right now...  I do think the time spent writing these lists is well spent and I shall awake tomorrow, to sit and highlight, make stars, hearts, flowers, underlines and set about my day full of to dos, to "don'ts", and realize the things on each list can all be titled, "Blessings."