Pour yourself a glass and settle in as we embark on a journey through the peaks and valleys of life with unwavering gratitude. I'll pull back the curtain on the heart-wrenching journey my wife and I have navigated after a startling genetic revelation. With the discovery of her BRCA2 gene mutation, we've faced the specter of cancer with courage and an unexpected thankfulness. This isn't just our story—it's a guiding light for anyone wrestling with life's unforeseen tests, a beacon of how gratitude can anchor us even as we weather the fiercest of storms.
Our recent family odyssey to Alaska—a stark departure from our norm—reveals the transformative power of vision boards and the serendipity that life has to offer. Imagine being hilariously underprepared for the Arctic chill, yet so vividly alive amid dog sledding escapades and the ethereal dance of the Northern Lights. This tale isn't just about our leaps into the unknown; it's an invitation to embrace the beauty that abounds when we seize the day, trading comfort zones for unforgettable experiences.
As we draw the curtains on this episode, I invite you to contemplate the profound insights shared by John Gottman on the resilience of relationships and Christine Pohl on finding solace amid life's unresolved challenges. Together, we explore the wisdom in appreciating our differences and choosing gratitude, even when neat resolutions evade us. It's a reflection on the strength we find in the unlikeliest places, and the grace that cradles us, even when life's chapters remain open-ended.
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Pour yourself a glass and settle in as we embark on a journey through the peaks and valleys of life with unwavering gratitude. I'll pull back the curtain on the heart-wrenching journey my wife and I have navigated after a startling genetic revelation. With the discovery of her BRCA2 gene mutation, we've faced the specter of cancer with courage and an unexpected thankfulness. This isn't just our story—it's a guiding light for anyone wrestling with life's unforeseen tests, a beacon of how gratitude can anchor us even as we weather the fiercest of storms.
Our recent family odyssey to Alaska—a stark departure from our norm—reveals the transformative power of vision boards and the serendipity that life has to offer. Imagine being hilariously underprepared for the Arctic chill, yet so vividly alive amid dog sledding escapades and the ethereal dance of the Northern Lights. This tale isn't just about our leaps into the unknown; it's an invitation to embrace the beauty that abounds when we seize the day, trading comfort zones for unforgettable experiences.
As we draw the curtains on this episode, I invite you to contemplate the profound insights shared by John Gottman on the resilience of relationships and Christine Pohl on finding solace amid life's unresolved challenges. Together, we explore the wisdom in appreciating our differences and choosing gratitude, even when neat resolutions evade us. It's a reflection on the strength we find in the unlikeliest places, and the grace that cradles us, even when life's chapters remain open-ended.
See audio and video episodes at: https://communionwineco.com/podcast/
Find out more at: https://linktr.ee/communionwineco
Welcome back. It is episode 19 of Cabernet and Prey. It's just me today, but I want to share some things that have been going on in my world. It's been quite a doozy of I don't know six months I mean, it's hard to even know what time to put on it but certainly the last week, last weeks, have been a lot, learning a lot, processing a lot, and I thought I'd sit down and share some of that with you, in hopes that maybe you're processing a lot or you're going through some things that maybe you can relate and we can learn together and we can grow together. In particular, I want to share some thoughts. I'm learning about gratitude and maybe rethinking that subject a little bit.
Speaker 1:Now, before we get into gratitude, it's time to talk about what I'm drinking. It's Cabernet and Prey, so I thought today I'd open a bottle of something that I actually got in person. I got to go to a winery in Santa Barbara County called Fess Parker, and what I'm drinking today is called the Big Easy. This is a 2020 red blend that Fess Parker makes In particular. They're in Los Olivos, california, and this is a blend of 52% Syrah, and this is a blend of 52% Syrah, 28% Petite Syrah and 20% Grenache. You know to lighten it up a little bit because those first two are pretty bold. This is obviously a nod to the city of New Orleans by name, but this is a really nice red blend that has a bunch going on for it.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of blends. I know some wine purists or not, they really like one varietal at a time to individualize it, really draw that out. But I like a good blend. I like getting a little bit of everything, especially when it's blended. Well. This one, I'm getting lots of amazing things. Even just on the nose of this, I get red plum, black cherry, black pepper, cinnamon and a little bit of graphite. You know, like from a mechanical pencil or something like that A little bit of that graphite as well, and just a really nice well-rounded holds up. By itself also could go with food. This is just a great everyday drinker, great table wine. This was not super expensive and so hopefully, if you are enjoying this episode in your home, you're opening a bottle along with me. You're enjoying something as well. So if that is you, let's drink together. As always, if you are driving or doing something where you need to be paying attention, don't drink, just save that for later if you want to revisit this episode, perhaps A little bit of what's been going on in our world.
Speaker 1:A few months back, my wife and I actually this is almost a year ago now, but we turned 40 this year, big milestone for us and when she turned 40 in September, she decided that she was going to go just get a checkup, just make sure everything's going well. And while she was there, they asked her if she wanted to get an optional genetic test done. Now, there was nothing that prompted this, there was nothing that they saw. They said, hey, let's take a look. It was literally like she went in I'm 40. Hey, let's just make sure everything's good. And in that conversation they kind of flippantly threw this out it was a few hundred bucks to get this test done. She's like, yeah, let's do it. So she gets this test done and just is more thinking like it'll be interesting to see. You know, maybe they give me some recommendations, or or you know nutrients that I'm low on or something like that. Right, like basic body type stuff, nothing in particular when we get the results back later we were shocked because they called her back and they said hey, we found something in your genetic testing that is super rare, that is not common at all.
Speaker 1:We don't make this phone call a lot, but you have what is called the BRCA2 gene. Now, at this point we knew like nothing about this. Even the day she called me, I had never heard of the BRCA2 gene. She had never heard of it. She had started doing research. You know, from the time she got the call to she called me, understood a little bit, but we were, we were kind of unknown.
Speaker 1:Basically, what we found out is this gene makes it roughly 80% 85% likely that you are going to get cancer in your lifetime. That often affects people in their 40s and 50s. They get, in particular, breast cancer is very common. But this was obviously a massively high ratio that all of a sudden we're dealing with and had no idea. And so the first wave was basically figuring out like, let's make sure she doesn't have any cancer right now. That we were unaware of and that's obviously was kind of our first panic, and so we did a bunch of tests and all those came back great, and she didn't have cancer and doesn't have cancer, and so we were super grateful for that, obviously.
Speaker 1:But then it became this conversation of what do you do when you know that this risk is unbelievably heightened for her and 85% is alarmingly high? This is like, hey, this is a big deal, something you're going to have to deal with, and we decided to look into everything. She did a lot of her research. She talked to different surgeons, talked to different experts, different doctors on different opinions and, you know, found out there's a number of ways you can go about this. And, uh, and this has kind of been our world for the last few months is dealing with this and processing through all of this.
Speaker 1:And I've been asked a lot, like people who have walked a little bit of this journey with us and who have known what she's been going through, like what are you guys feeling?
Speaker 1:And that's a question we regularly get asked how are you doing, how are you feeling? What's going on? And I think the answer that we have is a little surprising to most people, or perhaps they don't believe us and they think we're just, you know, trying to put on a good Christian face about it. But truthfully, the answer has been gratitude that this has produced gratitude in us and it has taken kind of this idea of like, oh, we have been a whole lifetime. We have all these years and really put in perspective, like we have right now, we have this moment, whole lifetime, we have all these years and really put in perspective, like we have right now, we have this moment, and this was a huge reminder that nothing in the future is guaranteed. Now, that's true for all of us, but oftentimes it takes something like this to sharpen your senses a bit, to rattle you a bit of like, hey, none of that's guaranteed. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. You have today and you don't even know what today's going to look like.
Speaker 1:So this has been the journey, but what we have found is that we just have this heightened sense of gratitude, and it's almost been a little bit surprising that this has been the dominant emotion, because it'd be very easy for my wife to play the victim right Like woe is me, why do I have this gene that most people don't have? Why do I have to deal with this? Why do I have to have these percentages the way they are? But that's just not the road that she's taken, and that's not been our experience in this together, and so really it's been a season of celebrating life, of taking time to go. Hey, we're not just going to go through the motions, we're going to slow down, we're going to be more aware and be more dialed in to what's going on right now. And it reminds me of something that the pastor and author, john Ortberg, has said. He says like this gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift.
Speaker 1:It opens us up to wonder, delight and humility. I love that idea. It's the ability to experience life as a gift. Life is a gift. It's a gift that it's often easy to take for granted, because we get busy and there are bills to pay and there are errands to run, and your kids need this and they need that, and we go from one thing to the next and oftentimes we get home from a job and we're so tired we don't even have time to process or think or celebrate the moment. But I love this. Simple definition of just gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift, and this means that you have to experience all of life as a gift, and that can oftentimes be hard to do.
Speaker 1:Now I want you to think about when do you feel gratitude? Now, most of the time, the knee-jerk reaction gratitude that we feel is when something awesome happens. You get the promotion, you get the job, you find out that thing you were working toward is going to happen, you get the Disney trip, I mean whatever it is. That's when we have the gratitude Like, yes, this is working, this is happening. I'm so grateful. And if you think about it, usually there are conditions that have to be met. If this happens, then I'll experience gratitude. And if this goes the way I hope it goes, then I'll experience gratitude.
Speaker 1:And there's even this subcurrent in Christian culture these days of like hashtag blessed Right, like just I'm hashtag blessed and Jesus blessed me. And it was like idea of like good things are going to happen and maybe a little bit like prosperity gospel thrown in there, like we're just going to believe that if I follow Jesus, all good things are going to happen. I'll avoid the bad ones and I'll only experience the good ones. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how do you have gratitude when things don't work out, when you get the call that you have bracketing and your future looks very different than you thought it was going to look like. And so for us, in this season of gratitude, we just decided we're going to just make the most of it.
Speaker 1:We do this thing every year. We call vision boards, mood boards, where we take all these magazines and we cut out either phrases or words or images that capture what we're feeling in that moment as we look ahead to a new year. And so, you know, some people make their New Year's resolutions this is probably as close as our family comes to this but we make these boards and we always put these things on and mine's hanging on my wall in my office and you know just something I can stare at and just kind of reminds me of how I felt going into this year, and you know, maybe some things that I was thinking about or words that that really stood out to me, and, and so one of the things that was on my wife's vision board was to go see the Northern lights, to go see something incredible, right, and, and so we had talked about that and that had been one of those things like, yeah, maybe someday it'd be awesome to do that. Well, in this season of like, hey, we don't have anything, you know, that we can plan on, we're not sure about the future. We decided to book a trip to Alaska and we did it in nine days and you might go. Why would you do that in nine days? That's not the way you do it. What we realized is we had a window of time, that this worked out with our schedules, that we could both do this and were able to have my sister-in-law and brother-in-law join us for this, and it wasn't as long of a trip as in an ideal scenario we'd like to do, but it was one of those. We could do this and we can make this work, and this is what we got, and so, rather than putting it off to someday would be awesome. We decided let's plan this Alaska trip in nine days, and I found myself reflecting on that trip a lot, because there's just a lot of unusual parts of this trip that were very different than most trips that we often take.
Speaker 1:Most of my vacations involve reading books and lots of time to think, and we have this joke like if we go somewhere that has a beach, michelle's going to be somewhere close to the water in the sun. I will be further back in the shade with a book, you know, and usually a good beverage to enjoy, but that's just kind of how we roll and she gets, you know, her cup filled, I get my cup filled, I get to relax, process, think deeply, ponder the meaning of life, all those things and that's what often works for us in, you know, some capacity. This vacation I lovingly dubbed it the extrovert vacation I don't think I read at all. There was no time to read. I mean, this was like boom, boom, boom. We're going to pack as much into these few days that we have as possible. What else could we do? And it was kind of one of those trips.
Speaker 1:And the first night we're out. Just to give you a scope, I mean we're going dog sledding, we're doing snowmobiles they call them snow machines there found out very touching Alaska. Don't call them snowmobiles, they're snow machines. But we were just doing all these things. And the first night we got back to our hotel room after all of our day's activities and our evening activity, to go do what we were there to do. We got back to the hotel room. I looked at my my watch 3, 21 AM. That is a long time to be awake. That's a long day and it's not like, hey, we were just resting. You know, you're on vacation. No, I'm saying like we were going going, going all day. Finally shut this thing down, 321. Get up the next day to go do it again. And it's just like this blur of activity of how much could we get in in this unique environment with the time that we had.
Speaker 1:And on top of that it was bizarrely cold in Alaska while we were there. I'm talking like negative 25 degrees, negative 28 degrees, like crazy levels of cold that I had never experienced in my life. And I live in Arizona so I don't have a ton of warm clothes. You know I have a lot of stuff we have from Oregon so I have rainy gear. Don't necessarily have like the snow gear or the extreme cold gear. It's not really something. So we had to do a bunch of research in the nine days we had, you know, cold gear. It's not really something. So we had to do a bunch of research in the nine days we had, you know, leading up to this vacation and we're buying, you know, different thermals and fleeces and you know merino wool and all sorts of fun stuff. And I had bought some Columbia boots that were like warm weather snow boots I thought would be awesome.
Speaker 1:I learned my first night out there my boots were not awesome and we're not going to handle the level of cold that we were throwing at them. In fact, that was the common denominator from all of us, all four of us in our group. The first night is our feet were freezing. I mean to the point where I would go out for a little bit and we had this little cabin you could come back in and warm up. I'd go out.
Speaker 1:I start like feeling my feet aching. They were so cold. I'd go in, try to warm them up. At one point I couldn't warm them up and so you know, you take your boots off, warm them up by the fire, try to massage your feet back. And I couldn't get one of my feet to come back Like I just couldn't get feeling back and I started literally thinking this is how people get frostbite Like this, this is the condition in which it happens.
Speaker 1:You know, negative 25 plus, uh, in Alaska at night, like this is how people lose, lose their toes Right, and so we're, we knew we were going out for the next night and so we're like, look, we got to get better gear, and I'm sure you know people in Alaska, they're used to this. So let's go to one of these stores. So we get a recommendation, we go to one of these stores and I literally go up to the people and we're like, hey, what do we need? And we had called our tour company. And we're like, hey, we're all freezing, you know our feet. How do we do this? And I'm like, well, when it's that cold, you need like negative 40 degree rated boots. I don't own any negative 40 degree rated boots. So we go to the next store, to the store in the next area, and I literally asked the lady I'm like what are the highest rated boots that you've got in stock right now? And she's like come with me, she takes me over to this section and she's like see these things. I'm like, yeah, she's like negative 90 degrees. I'm like I'll take them and let me tell you, those things are like warm pillows for your feet, even in negative 28 degrees.
Speaker 1:Because the next night was fantastic and we were able to weather that brutal cold and it was a completely different experience. And you go, why were you doing all this? Well, all of it was to see the Northern Lights, and we got to see an unbelievable demonstration of what this looks like, in particular our first night out there. And not only did you see the green that just lit up the sky and was dancing all over the place, but there was this magenta that worked its way through the green and I mean it was one of those things. Like it felt like you were at Disneyland watching one of their evening shows of like OK, all the, all the special effects, except you're not at Disneyland, you're out in the middle of nowhere, you're freezing your butt off and you're looking up at the sky, going. This doesn't seem real, like this just defies any explanation.
Speaker 1:And I'm looking at Michelle and we had this moment of like. We did it, we did it. We were able to pull this trip together in nine days. We were able to see something that a lot of people never see, and we did it. And she just starts crying. We just have this moment outside, a quick moment, because we had to get back in the cabin so we didn't die, but just this incredible moment of like wow, this is life, like life is just crazy.
Speaker 1:Now, even coming back, we had to get a red eye flight. It was gnarly. So we get back, we're flying through the night, we get a layover in Seattle. We're like hey, let's get a hotel room and get a little bit of sleep. So we're not, like you know, trying to crash because we had a long layover and we ended up setting our alarm in Seattle at 3.05 am. Not a fan of the 3.05 am wake up, especially after having just a few hours of sleep that night. But this is what you do when those are your options and you're making it work.
Speaker 1:And I remember, on the flight back, looking out my window and watching the sunrise, the flight back, looking out my window and watching the sunrise and just having this moment of like I'm exhausted. That was a crazy trip. We, we really just shoved everything in we could at the last minute. A lot of it was just felt crazy Like what? Why are we doing this? And yet it was like we did it. We, we made the most of this, we were able to see this. And there was just this overwhelming sense of gratitude. And I just keep thinking back of like, okay, I would not wish this season of what we have been going through with Michelle and Bracket 2, I would not wish this on anyone. And yet I am so grateful that this has been the reaction, that this sense of gratitude is the thing we keep coming back to, and I just have been thinking about this a lot. What's going on here. How do we foster more of this?
Speaker 1:Now there's this book I've been reading for an upcoming sermon that I'm doing and the book is on marriage. It's called the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, and this is a very well-known book. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's a bestseller over a million copies sold by John M Gottman, and also his wife is contributing to this as well. But they take like a scientific approach to marriage and not just, hey, here are the tried and true methods that we've been told all along things you got to do. But like, hey, we actually studied couples for decades and watched them and measured what behaviors lead to divorce and what behaviors work, measured, um, what behaviors lead to divorce and what behaviors work. And I read something yesterday and and uh, I just was like whoa when I read this to Michelle uh, who's sitting next to me and I was like, uh, this is, this is a crazy sentence. And uh, I want to share this with you. And this is all again been kind of rolling in my mind. Uh, john Gottman says this kind of rolling in my mind.
Speaker 1:John Gottman says this one of the most surprising truths about marriage is that most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Isn't that great Like this is. This is like one of the leading experts in the world on relationships in a book that is like a benchmark book of hey, how, how do you scientifically dial in your marriage? And you get to this line most marital arguments cannot be resolved. And I just read that and I stopped and I was like wait, what this? And I just read that and I stopped and I was like wait what? This isn't good news. What does this mean? He goes on to say this Couples spend year after year trying to change each other's mind, but it can't be done.
Speaker 1:Some of you are nodding your head in agreement. Right now. You're like, yeah, been there. This is because most of their disagreements are rooted in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality or values. By fighting over these differences, all they succeed in doing is wasting their time and harming their marriage. Instead, they need to understand the bottom line difference that is causing the conflict and learn how to live with it by honoring and respecting each other. Only then will they be able to build shared meaning and a sense of purpose into their marriage.
Speaker 1:Now I don't know if that is an encouraging idea to you or a super discouraging idea to you of? Like you mean this one argument that we keep going back and forth on, like, yeah, it's probably not going to get solved. And we were like Michelle and I were just joking like what are those things we keep coming back to that in all the years of our marriage we don't seem to ever have resolved. And there's a few of them that we just like, yeah, we've kind of found like a working balance with that. But like, we still fundamentally see it differently. And maybe for you it's like you know it's the toilet seat or it's which way to put the cups. Are you just like we cannot agree on these things? And the Gottmans are basically saying like, yeah, like a lot of these arguments can't be resolved. Saying like, yeah, like a lot of these arguments can't be resolved and you're wasting your time trying to get to a resolution when instead you need to learn how to honor and respect each other in the midst of having differing values.
Speaker 1:But as I've reflected on that idea and how, again, the first time I read it it just didn't sit well. And yet I've been staring at it and pondering and thinking through. Ok, it's led me to to apply it to this gratitude conversation and and here's the way I would say it Gratitude doesn't need resolution. This is like my big takeaway for you today Gratitude doesn't need resolution. Now, so often we act like it does right. When this happens, I will feel grateful when I get the job, when I get the raise, when I get the girl right, when I finally succeed in this thing, when we reach this destination. Whatever that end goal is the resolution that you're looking for. If we attach gratitude to the resolution of things that may never be resolved, we are preventing ourselves from massive amounts of gratitude ourselves from massive amounts of gratitude, and what I think I have been learning recently is that there's not a happy resolution when you find out you have the brackitude gene. There's just not. And so if gratitude is dependent on some silver bullet, this is going to be amazing and pain-free and risk-free, and this is awesome. I am going to miss out on experiencing gratitude. But if I go into the situation and I say, you know what? I don't need resolution on this in order to feel gratitude, then all of a sudden I have massive amounts of opportunities to feel gratitude, and that is what we have been experiencing lately.
Speaker 1:Now, to keep the story going, michelle decided to get a preventative double mastectomy, which is a massive decision for any woman to make. This is based on all of the science that we found, all the facts that we stared at. This was, in our opinion, for our situation, the best move. This is what we felt like hey, with this high, 85% risk, it's just not worth that. And we can remove that risk dramatically if you will go and do this procedure. And so she had. It's called a deep flap double mastectomy procedure and you can Google it because it's a funky. It's a funky deal. I'm amazed what surgeons can do with the human body these days. Let's put it that way. But this was a nine hour surgery that she just got done with and you know we had to be there super early in the morning so we're already kind of groggy, didn't sleep well the night before, as you can imagine all the feelings, all the thoughts, all the worry and knowing you have to wake up super early, get her to the hospital, she gets, you know, everything checked in, I say goodbye to her and then she begins this nine hour surgery.
Speaker 1:And just to be transparent with you, it was a brutal day for me. I joked with Michelle. I was like you have to to physically go through this, but from your point of view, you're going to go to sleep and then wake up and this is going to be done. I said, from my point of view, I don't have any of the physical dynamics, but I have nine hours of waiting and just the anxiety of that, and that was kind of our joke that day. But when I dropped her off, they literally said, hey, this is going to be so long. Um, just go home, like, come back later tonight. Um, we'll let you know, you know when we're done. But this is, this is a really long procedure. There's no point in just waiting in the waiting room. So it's okay.
Speaker 1:So I, I go to my car after this and, uh, and I just lost it. I mean, I just sat there and cried and I'm not a super crier, although as I've gotten older it's become more prevalent than it used to be Still don't cry a lot, but this was, this was one of those moments. I just all the emotion of this, all of the feeling of this, just came out and I sat in my Jeep by myself in the parking lot of a surgery center early in the morning and just cried. And after I was done having a good cry. I didn't know what else to do and I didn't want to just go home to an empty house. So I went to there's this park by our house that has a little lake, and I went and sat on a bench and stared at the water and just talked to God for a little bit, sat still, just thought about life and just pondered everything, felt all the emotions of that.
Speaker 1:After a while of doing that, I was antsy, I was fidgety, I just I didn't know what to do. So I thought I need to exercise, I need to move my body, I need to get some things going. And so I put on a weighted vest and got my dogs out and I was like all right, we're going to go for a walk, ended up walking four miles around my neighborhood and got a good sweat going and just powered through it and it was like I need to be moving, need to be doing something. After that I didn't know what to do. So I just started, like stress, cleaning my house and at some point my kids came home from school during all that and I didn't realize I was stress cleaning. I just didn't know what to do and at one point my daughter looked at me and I guess I had been making and remaking our bed, like just doing all sorts of weird details to it, and she's like dad, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, like to kind of stop me in my tracks, like I, I don't know, like I don't know what else to do, and just the way of worry and anxiety and you know, worrying about my wife and all that she was going through, finally get the call from the surgeon actually multiple calls from multiple surgeons there was three involved in her surgery that everything went well, everything was going great, and eventually I was able to go back to the hospital, see her in recovery and spent the next couple days with her in the hospital while she was recovering and, you know, just sat by her bed and and again I would say the dominant emotion was gratitude, like I am so grateful to have you for this moment, cause we, we just don't know any of this and what the future holds, and it has just dialed us in this situation, is very unresolved. This has been brutal on her body, by far the hardest thing she has had to recover from physically, and my wife is probably the strongest person I know and certainly the strongest person I've ever seen recover from surgery in the past, and this one no different than that. But just watching how tough this was on her body and on the recovery of all this and realizing this and we're still looking at another, probably two surgeries this year, follow-up surgeries for all of this that's affiliated with this BRCA2 gene. And I say that because what I don't feel is resolution. I don't feel resolution. I don't feel like, wow, we solved it, we fixed it, we're not worried about that anymore. I don't feel that at all, but I do feel gratitude and it's almost been heightened in the fact that I don't have resolution and that's a tremendous encourager is that if the lack of resolution, with the right perspective, could actually heighten our sense of gratitude, then you and I have all kinds of opportunities to be more grateful. Because I bet, as you're listening to this or watching this, you are thinking of things in your own life that are not resolved, things that you're anxious about, things that you're worried about, things that keep you up at night, things that wake you up at night that you go I do not know about that, things that are making you cry in your car. Those are the things that you go. Yeah, I don't have resolution and the human experience is filled with them. But what if we allowed those moments to produce gratitude in us, to go, wow, so grateful for the reminder that I am here right now, that I have this moment right now, and even without the resolution, I can still choose gratitude.
Speaker 1:The author, christine Pohl, says it like this gratitude begins with paying attention, with noticing the goodness, beauty and grace around us. So here's my question for you today Are you paying attention? Are you paying attention to the goodness and the beauty and the grace around you Happy feelings, not the dodged a bullet on that one. But are you paying attention to the moments that you can say, hey, we can, we can appreciate this, and it may not be on the terms that you would like, it may not be in the time frame you would like, it may not be remotely the way that you would have drawn this up or have desired it, that you would have drawn this up or have desired it. And yet I'm just being constantly reminded in this season that gratitude is always a choice before us if we pay attention.
Speaker 1:So I don't know what the rest of our story looks like I know right now, my wife is getting stronger every day. I know that I have loved the chance to take care of her and to be supportive of her in this season. I know that so many people have been encouraged by the way that she has shared about her own journey and how she has faced this head on, and I hope that she encourages more women to do similar tests and to make hard decisions for their health and for their future. But I don't know where resolution is going to come from. I don't know what the next surgery is going to look like or when. I don't know about surgery three. I mean.
Speaker 1:There's just so many things that continue to be not resolved, and that is my message for you today is don't wait on resolution. Do not let resolution to your issues hold you hostage from gratitude. Gratitude is available in the midst of it, and if it's anything like what we've experienced, that situation that's creating anxiety in your life right now, might actually be the key for you experiencing gratitude in new and profound ways. So hopefully that message is encouraging to you today, hopefully it speaks to something you may be going through and the reminder that gratitude is available to all of us, I think is very good news. So to all of that, I want to say cheers to you, thanks for listening, thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.