Life is good.

When you feel grateful. Grateful comes most intensely when you go through the rough patches in life. You have to be grateful to be happy. So......(and this is the funny part) if you correlate that (like a math problem) - life's difficulties can bring us to a place of greatest happiness, appreciation, and peace. Who would have guessed? Well actually, wise people like our parents know stuff like this. Also, President Monson spoke about this at LDS General Conference a few weeks ago. I needed to hear that.

It's kind of counter-intuitive how difficulties can sharpen to almost super-human levels your appreciating for simple joys, comforts, compassion, goodness...

Like, when a toddler climbs up on your head in the morning as you are trying to sleep. And you have to smile drowsily. Or when that toddler lays there softly singing jabbery 2-year-old songs. How cool is it when thoughtful neighbors think of you and share from their gardens - because they know you didn't have a chance to plant one yourself? Or when an old friend calls out of the blue to say hello. Children who put up with you - and forgive you. Or the sun rising in a fall sky. Today I saw a guy on a motorcycle drive by the Air National Guard and salute the flag as he passed - and I thought, "how cool".

Do we notice all the things around us that are right? Sometimes it takes struggling & suffering a little to refocus on what has been given and not on what is lacking. To feel really grateful and happy.

From Pres. Monson:

Regardless of our circumstances, each of us has much for which to be grateful if we will but pause and contemplate our blessings.

This is a wonderful time to be on earth. While there is much that is wrong in the world today, there are many things that are right and good. There are marriages that make it, parents who love their children and sacrifice for them, friends who care about us and help us, teachers who teach. Our lives are blessed in countless ways.

We can lift ourselves and others as well when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts an attitude of gratitude. If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues. Someone has said that "gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others."

:)