4 things: choice, prayer, challenges & sleep

This morning, I gave thanks for the ability to choose my attitude - to choose gratitude over resentment or depression or anger or hurt.

That ability - to choose my attitude - pretty much changes the nature of the entire day, doesn't it? It changes all of the possibilities.

Victor Frankel realized this as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp & was the subject of his book, "Man's Search for Meaning," to which I was first introduced @ Providence College.

Next, I realized I was grateful for prayer. Our Country (USA) was founded on faith, and prayer, and tolerance (of even the God-less, or atheist). I believe the media, political activists, and the current social peer-pressure are promoting - and even worse, trying to create an America that is ruled by a doctrine of Atheism. Under their false banner of "tolerance," they are actively removing any reference to faith or God or The Great I Am, or The Divine ... even to the point that the US Treasury is actually printing coins without the words "Under God We Trust."

Ben Stein wrote an article re-interating that a sterile-atheist-government was never the intention of the founders of this Country. Here it is reprinted in its entirety (the bold is my doing):
[you can find the original on Ben Stein's Official Website - under "Stuff Ben Wrote - December 2005" - times have gotten even worse since he wrote it]

"Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don't know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It's not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to."


Aside from the political point about prayer, why am I grateful for it? Because it brings me peace when I would otherwise ruin everything I touch being tied in knots about things/people over which I have no control. Because I believe that prayer is a simple way to connect to God, my Divine Source. Because connecting to God, and imparting and using the wisdom and grace from that connection in this earthly world, with people, is what I believe our ultimate calling is. Because prayer "works." I'm a lawyer, and I can really get into definitions, but I can't define what I mean by "works." It's that sort of "you know when you (experience) it" sort of thing.

I am grateful for all of the life challenges that I have "turned over" to God in prayer - those things over which "I can not change" and have no control. Why am I grateful for those challenges? Because without them my ego would definitely have me believing that I don't need to pray, and really, that I don't need God either. [Hmmm, as if "need" were an issue, that's an ego thing right there. God isn't a need - connection with God just "is"]


And, I am grateful for sleep. Sleep can change everything. It washes away hurt, wounds, tiredness, cloudiness. It rejuvenates and brings new vision and new optimism. Feel stuck? Take a nap. Get a fresh perspective.


So, there it is:
1. ability to choose my attitude
2. prayer
3. challenges that lead me to prayer
4. sleep

Wishing you,

All the Best,
Theresa
The Kids' Bank Book