Sarbear is going on a mission. I thought this phase of seeing my friends off on missions was over when Kel and Holly returned from their missions. I have had close best friends leave, and I have had friends that I grew to love over time leave, and just friends I made over the years leave. They all come back. But its that stage of change that, that loss of constant communication, that longing for those moments and memories with your friends that I miss most. Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone, but then I remember, I don’t handle that kind of work well. I don’t handle uncontrollable well.
Along with the process of Sarbear preparing for her mission, she has returned home. Which is farther than 1 hour from me, which means its farther than seeing her at least once a week. So I started a new tradition and now its our tradition. Inspired by an article I read 2 years ago about the psychology of gratitude, I decided that maybe a fun tradition and a way to keep us both from becoming depressed, was to start a daily gratitude to each other.
So every night, like we do our prayers, we send each other a text, with the daily gratitude of the night. Needless to say its been a week and we have had our failed moments, but we have also had some successful ones. Pointing out moments of gratitude each day does make a difference though. It gives you a moment to not dwell on the negative.
So many bad things can happen in a day. I know from my last month of tears streaming, body racked sobs, and list of reasons why I feel like I have fallen into a hole, that bad days happen. Bad things happen. A lot of bad things can happen. But digging yourself out, and dusting yourself off is how you should define your day. So I have made an effort to make my end of the day, a moment of reflection for the gratitudes in life.
Sometimes its better to recognize the one good thing that happened today, instead of dwelling on the five million bad things.
Hopefully we can keep this up. Keeping in touch. Keeping our spirits high.
The Jayne Project 