The newest trend I’ve noticed on Facebook is the gratitude challenge. A friend challenges you to name three things you are grateful for for seven days. I haven’t been challenged yet, but I was thinking about it when I was driving home from a friend’s house the other day.
I’m grateful for my strength. Not just my emotional strength which I’ve discovered I have in spades, but my physical strength as well. I’ve never really appreciated that fact before because it made me feel unfeminine. Tall and stocky with the broad shoulders, I’ve always felt a little manly. (Thank God for breasts!)
Lately, I’m happy that I’m strong. It’s freeing, in a way, to know that I don’t need to rely on anyone but myself to get things done. I’m completely independent. I don’t need to wait around until I can ask someone to do something. I can get things done and spend the rest of the time just enjoying being with my friends and loved ones.
This thought came upon me after driving by a hutch on the side of a really backwoods road with a big “Free” sign on it. It was a really nice piece of furniture, solid wood, and I thought, “That would look really great in a garden shed as a potting surface and storage unit.” I pulled into the bottom of the long dirt driveway, lowered half of the backseat while my son was asking me why we were stopping. In the pouring rain (did I mention it was raining?) I pushed and pulled and lifted that sucker up and into the back of my small SUV. I didn’t have any bungee cord or rope, and since the end of the hutch was sticking out of the hatch, I pulled the auxillary cord for my iPod out of my glovebox and used that to tie my hatch door down. We were back on the road less than five minutes later.
Just give me a chambray shirt and a bandana and I’ll show you how to move some furniture, baby!
When I pulled into my garage, (and after I got over feeling weird for taking something off the road) I was pretty darn proud of myself. I saw something I wanted and I was able to get it all by myself. As I gloated, I unloaded it, moved it to a safe place, untied the auxillary cord completely and I pulled the hatch closed….
BAM! I smashed the corner of the door into my skull. As I staggered back against the garage wall and clutched my head, I thought, “Well damn, I guess that’s what I get for being so smug.” I would have laughed if the pain in my head wasn’t so horrible. I spent the next half hour on the couch with an ice pack on my head while my son danced around the living room begging me to make chocolate chip cookies.
The moral of this story? I’m grateful for my strength, for people who give away nice furniture and the fact that I didn’t give myself brain damage while being distracted by my own awesomeness.
Is there anything about yourself that you’re grateful for?
Mainely Sane 