A Life rethought...

Do you live a Life of Gratitude or a Life of Deserving???
I wonder if anyone will really know the difference if you have never heard my"terms" before.
I have been thinking about our families commitment to live in Gratitude.  Some days are harder than others to keep the positive out look.  Yet, in the last five years, I believe that the transition has been the single most moving thing in our lives.  I say moving, because literally Gratitude moves With you.  Or, rather, YOU move with it.
This topic came to a head today while out on the front porch reading.  It has become one of the most comfortable places to read, talk, relax.  Nae goes in and out of the house to check on Trav and I.  Today, she crawled up into my lap as she normally does.  I was relishing the moment, loving that she still loves to sit there.  She put her hand lovingly on my face, and in a blink of a moment my life and time stood still.  Its no longer a chore to be grateful for these things in my life.  I could feel the gratitude flow out of me, honored to have a little moment with her in my lap.  Just as a half hour before I had that the feeling as I sat quietly next to my husband and watched him read in grateful silence to be able to sit with him this way.
This is our attempt at Gratitude, I describe to you what I try to do, but my husband does the same things on a daily basis.
We led a Life of Deserving for so many years.  Looking at Life as though we deserved every little bit of what Life offered us.  Selfish and thoughtless to the fact that we were digging ourselves an emotional hole of debt.   New car? Yup, we worked hard we deserved it.  Eat out?  Yup, we had the money, we deserved.  New clothes? Why not, I already had a bunch, but I deserved it.
Even now, writing these words, seeing SO many still not "Getting It".  I'm so attuned to think just how grateful we are to have learned this lesson so much younger than if we stayed ignorant.
Don't get me wrong we still get the fact that new cars, eating out, and new clothes are good things.  But these thing are about necessity and in a Grateful mind frame, you think a lot more simply about those things.  A newer car, safe and reasonable.  We can make it at home better than most restaurants.  I just need the one tank top really. I don't need to get the same one in all the colors just because I know it'll be comfortable.
It has a lot to do with finishing your race with the Jones's.  We live a a society where we always believe we need to keep up.   Trav and I let go of that years ago.  We have always ran behind the curve, and have never really felt all that bad about it.  Our own pace, our own Drummer.  Now, seeing how different our relationship is, with each other, our daughter, our families.  Yeah, a Life of Gratitude was always in the cards.