To Make a Difference

To make a difference in someone's life, 

you don't have to be brilliant, rich, 

beautiful, or perfect; 

you just have to care.

Today is my favorite day of the week!  It is Five Minute Friday!  That is where a group of us (a really big group!) get together over at Lisa Jo's place to share five minutes on the same prompt. It is a chance to write your heart out for five minutes without worrying whether it is just right or not.  So, take a few moments and join us.  

This weeks prompt is:

Gratitude

START

There are so many things that I am grateful for, so many opportunities for gratitude in my life.  I used to have a hard time finding positive things to focus on.  It seemed as if so much of my life was negative.  Gradually, I found the negative overwhelmingly pushed away the positive.  I never felt good.  I found myself being critical and constantly judging myself.  I honestly believed that I had no worth.  That nothing I did mattered.  I crawled onto my bed, hid under to covers and waited desperately to die.  

Realizing that I was not in a good place, I forced myself to go and get help.  It was a long road back.  It twists and turns back in on itself from time to time.  Sometimes I am healthy, and sometimes I am overwhelmed with depression.  The one major skill I have learned on this journey is that it is essential to find things in my life to have gratitude for.  They can be small or large, they can be friends or family, they can be beauty or health.  But in finding the small everyday things to be grateful for, my focus has gradually changed.  

The more I focus on gratitude, the more I find to be grateful for.  The more beauty I see, the more I find hiding along the way.  A little bit of thankfulness, breeds even more; until I look at the world around me with entirely new eyes.  I know that I don't have to be perfect.  I only have to be myself and allow Him to use me where He wills.  

Through it all, I have learned that gratitude is not only a blessing, it is a gift that we give ourselves.  It teaches us to really see the world around us.  Gratitude gives us new hearts and new eyes and new understanding.  

I am enough.  He has placed me here and for that, my heart is filled with gratitude.  

STOP

Now it is your turn.  Tell us in five minutes what gratitude means to you.  Don't forget to join us back over at Lisa Jo's to link up your thoughts.