Right Now

All my life I have been encouraged to say thank you to God. It's so easy to say please, to ask why and to moan. Saying thank you can be a lot more difficult.

When life is easy, when things are going well, when the sun is shinning and when I am enjoying life, saying thank you comes easily. I just have to open my mouth and it bubbles out.

When life is difficult, when everything is going wrong, when the sun is hidden behind black clouds and when life is a struggle from one difficult moment to the next difficult moment, saying thank you is one of the hardest things in a very hard life. If I even manage to open my mouth in the first place, thank you is buried at the very bottom of a heavy heart.

Once the difficult days have passed, I can look back and see the good points and then I can say thank you, but when I'm right in the middle of the trouble, every fibre in my body rebells against saying thank you. The more I remember somebody saying I should say thank you you in the middle of trials, the more I set my heart against it and the more impossible it seems.

I don't plan on saying something I don't mean. I know there are some people who can sincerely say thank you when life hurts and they really mean it. Right now, I haven't yet worked out how they do that.

Until I have, I'm not going to say thank you and not mean it when life is hurting me. But I'm not going to give up and never say thank you until the sun is shining again. Instead, I'm going to say thank you for the right now.

I'm going to say thank you for 3 minutes of walking on the grass with bare feet, while the sky is blue and the sun is shining. I'm going to say thank you for a kind message from a friend. I'm going to say thank you for 1 minute of laughter over a new joke. I'm going to say thank you for a sister's hug. I'm going to say thank you for a passing stranger's smile.

When the right now is all I have, all I can do is say thank you.