Five Minute Friday - Gratitude for being noticed

Today is Five-Minute Friday, one of my favorite days of the entire week.  This is a time where a group of us join together and just write for five short minutes without worrying about whether it is just right or not.  Then we link back over at Heading Home with Kate and try and make a difference with our words.  Today the Prompt is:

NOTICE

START

What do you notice in the world around you?  Do you notice the ugliness, or the blessings?  Is the glass half full?  Or half empty?  Do people love you or hate you?  

We all want to be noticed.  We want to be remembered, to be appreciated and most of all, to be loved.  Being noticed is so much more than visibly seeing something.  It is to connect to it with you heart.  Being noticed is being understood, not for what you can do, but for yourself.  Being noticed is powerful.  It can take a bad day and make it change to a good one in the blink of an eye.  

For years, I have gone to my daughters track meets.  They have all run in track, and not a single one is very fast.  As a matter of fact, they usually cross the finish line in last place.  I got very good at being able to find those girls on a field covered with hundreds of other kids.  I also go very good at noticing when they beat their own scores.  

One of the things we have gone over is how track is a competition against yourself.  You don’t have to be the best.  You just need to work on getting better every week.  Some weeks were hard.  They would come in last and be so upset.  But gradually, they learned to notice other things: how they felt physically, if they lost weight, if they did better than the last time, how their friends did.  They learned that coming in first was not the only goal.  Sometimes the goal was simply to clap and cheer for someone else.  They learned that finishing the race was the most important thing of all.

What a great life-lesson it has been for them.  They learned to participate even if they weren’t the best (or in the top for that matter).  They learned that trying is more important than winning.  And they learned to improve one moment, on second, one step at a time.   Perhaps it is something that most of us need to learn ourselves.  The only person we should ever compete against is the person we were yesterday.  Comparison is totally the thief of joy.

I have also noticed what amazing young women I am blessed to be a mother to.  I notice when they hold their heads up, their arms out and when they walk with Him.   

I notice. 

STOP

Now it is your turn.  What can you write in your own short Five-Minutes?  Don't forget to link back over to Kate's Place with the rest of us.