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Gratitude on a Bad Day

Everyone has bad days.  A bad day is usually seen as a day when all the planned things do not work right or take too much time or just don’t happen.  Bad days can occur when something unexpected or unwanted comes in to disrupt everything.  Bad days come to everyone, and thankfully they do not come every day,

I have been pondering the idea of being grateful.  Rabbi Daniel Lapin says that gratefulness is the key to happiness.  If someone wants to be happy and optimistic, he says, then start each day by writing three things they are grateful for.  Each days list has to be different than the previous day, no repeats.  So I have been thinking about this since I tend to not be a very optimistic person.

Then today happened.  I ran several errands and got the wrong things and went to the wrong stores.  Once thing that had to get done today was to cover the vent hole that leads to the crawlspace under our house.  On Sunday night a young skunk got under there and let loose. We know it was a young skunk because it smelt like burnt onions with a little burnt plastic thrown in.  We googled that and the consensus was that young skunks have a unique and distinct spray odor.  Well it came into our house and leaked up through the hard wood and made my computer bag stink and the whole house, even today, still has a faint odor.  So I had to cover that hole.  I went to the store and got the appropriate size and came back and realized why it was not covered.  The cable box covered 15% of the hole and there is a water pipe right next to the hole on the other side.  So I took the screen back and got the smaller size.  I also got two tubes of silicon glue/sealant.  The screen barely covers and leaves a 1 inch opening on the bottom.  I screwed it in and covered the edges with lots of this sealant/glue.  Hopefully it will seal and Harden before anything comes and tries to get in.

A dozen others things went wrong making today a bad day and I thought, “what am I grateful for?  Nothing.”  In the heat of frustration grateful thoughts do not come easy.  I can see why Rabbi Lapin says to do it in the morning.  It must be done before the day takes over.  One way to look at it is that I would not need to do these errands if I did not have a house and I could not do these errands if I did not have a car.  So I am grateful for my house and for my car.  I am also grateful that we have enough money to do maintenance on our house and car.  So that is three for today.  As a Pastor I should be able to find many things to be grateful, but no repeating.

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