Grateful Heart Monday

Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday, a dedicated time set aside for gratitude from my life each week, which for today is for something I normally wouldn’t be grateful for whatsoever and am usually quite annoyed with instead. But, I’m choosing to look at it differently, with a grateful set of eyes, and that’s for all those whirly-birds and leaves that fall into my yard every spring and fall.

For most who know me, I tend to treat my yard with a little too much OCD, liking it to always look extremely neat and orderly. But during two times of the year that last about 2 to 3 weeks each, it becomes very hard to maintain, when all those maple trees around my house shed thousands of whirly-birds and leaves.

There have been countless times that I’ve cursed those trees, shouting with my “Shop Vac” wand pointing at the skies at how annoying they are. But, today, when I cleaned up the first big round of those whirly-birds, I actually approached it differently. I approached it with gratitude, and was thankful for the opportunity to be more mindful in my life, to learn greater patience, and ultimately, to keep my mind occupied on something other than my ongoing frustrations with my health, as well as anything else I’ve been worrying about lately.

Given I don’t have any job in my life to take up a lot of my time, nor any heavy volunteer work due to the pandemic having cleared away much of that, I’ve had an incredible amount of free time, which for the addict like me isn’t always the best thing, and is precisely what I was thinking about today as I began to clear away the first big round of spring clean-up. At least my focus in my downtime was on a healthy action.

If there’s one that isn’t healthy for an addict like me, is to just sit in the house for endless hours, surfing the internet and watching tv, because it generally leads to nothing good in the long run, and even greater depression at times. Thus, having this task is a blessing rather than a curse.

So, I’ve decided this spring, and coming up this fall, to be grateful instead for all the time I’m outside taking care of those whirly-birds and leaves. I’m going to remain thankful for having something to occupy my life in a healthy way, for continuing to beautify my yard and be out in nature, and having the chance to learn how to be more mindful in my life, present in my actions, and at peace through it all.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Author: Andrew Arthur Dawson

A teacher of meditation, a motivational speaker, a reader of numerology, and a writer by trade, Andrew Arthur Dawson is a spiritual man devoted to serving his Higher Power and bringing a lot more light and love into this world. This blog, www.thetwelfthstep.com is just one of those ways...

Your comments would be great! (NOTE: Please reload this page before entering any to prevent a session timeout.)