Support4Change Blog

November 19, 2007

Categories: Deepening Faith and Spirituality, Strengthening Friendship and Relationships

By Arlene Harder, MA, MFT

Watching a Turkey Card Being Created

After you’ve seen this picture being animated on Support4Change, go to Katie’s Cards where it, and others, can be sent to as many friends in a year as you would like for only $9 (USA).

Breathing Deeply to Get Through Busy Days

Don’t know what the turkey thinks about the season [if you see the card being painted, you’ll notice he walks of his own free will to the house, to become the center of dinner or to survive another year is not clear], but he reminds me that the holidays are almost upon us. So in these days that flow one into another all too quickly, I’m trying to maintain the calm-and-collected tone I tell others they should have. It’s getting a bit harder each day as I feel the pressure of our upcoming trip to Egypt and Kenya. Further, that will be preceded, and followed, by time in Washington, DC, to visit a new grandchild whose birth is expected this week. So I’m pulling out every trick I know for remaining stress-free. Haven’t done too badly thus far, but the days press on and there’s lots to do.

Here’s what I do. Whenever I feel tugged by the pressure of tasks undone, I put into practice techniquea I describe in Easy Relaxation Techniques and Breathing Essentials. While these articles are part of my class on imagery techniques, they work fine for anyone any time, especially during the holidays.

Being Grateful to a Long List of People

Today, as I look forward to baking and visiting with my niece who is coming from Death Valley to spend a couple days baking cookies with me and a local friend and go out to dinner on Thanksgiving, I want to suggest an idea. You can do this any time of the year, but it is especially good this week when we’re supposed to focus on gratitude. To begin, I want to repeat what I said almost a year ago in Gratitude in the Morning when I had just started this blog:

“When I pray for specific things, I feel connected to the wider world more than I do when I simply say, ‘Thank you, God, for this food.’ That isn’t a bad sentiment by itself, but I’ve often thought that we give God credit and skip over those who do the hard work that allows us to read the newspaper and eat a good breakfast.”

My suggestion to you this week is to think of the thousands of people who make your life possible. Here are some examples of a very few of those who have made my life easier lately:

• The person who installed the horn on someone’s car so the driver could honk at me as I was moving into that lane, which prevented a possible collison had I not heard the horn last week.
  
  
• The person who designed the horn.
  
  
• The person who knew enough to honk at me in time.
  
  
• The person(s) who created the machine that allows the optomitrist to check my eyes and give me a prescription for a new set of glasses.
  
  
• The person(s) who designed the InDesign CS3 program that allows me to put my new book online and to have it printed.
  
  
• The person(s) who knows how to take the PDF file I’ve created and turn it into a printed copy of my book.
  
  
  • The person(s) who keeps the phone line repaired so I can talk with my daughter and grandchildren who live back east. 

I’m sure you get the idea. I could have made note of more than you would care to read about, for example, I could have included not only the person who came yesterday to repair a mistake he made when working on furniture on my deck, but also the person who created the spray can he used to make the repair. It wasn’t as good a match for the paint as I would have liked, but that’s not the point. The point is that lots of people had to create the product for the can, mix the paint, get it into the can, put lettering on the can so one can know how to use it, etc.

My suggestion for all the readers to the blog this week is that you make a list of absolutely as many people as you possibly can on a large piece of paper. Then take a highlighting pen and write “THANK YOU!”over the whole page, covering at least a small part of each person and his or her contribution to your life.

This could be a good exercise for children who come for Thanksgiving and need something to do while dinner is being prepared. Give them a large sheet of butcher paper and have them consider everyone who makes that day possible, from the farmer who raised the turkey to the clerk in the store that keeps the refrigerator working so that the meat is kept at a cool and safe temperature. It would certainly get kids to think about thanks beyond the usual gratitude for their parents and the turkey.

I’d love to hear how you made use of this Thanksgiving week suggestion. Contact me through the contact form on Support4Change.

If you’d like a preview of the blog I’ll give you later in the week, read Gathering the Family for Love and Healing.