Grateful to Be Alive

I am grateful to be alive, to breathe clean air, to drink clean water, to live in America. I am grateful to live in Montana, more specifically Bozeman. I am grateful to have a beautiful wife who loves and respects me. I am grateful to have 2 sons who inspire me to be my best, most excellent self. I am grateful to have access to unlimited information and educational resources. I am grateful to have excellent health. I am grateful to have the capacity to think for myself...I am grateful...but it was not always so.

12 months ago my health was on the decline, I was taking multiple medications 4-5 times a day to control a disease that was becoming less and less manageable, and my ability to function, think, and act with purpose was diminishing rapidly by the day. The people around my--especially my Melissa and our 2 sons, were paying the price. Seldom did I have energy or enthusiasm to go, do, or enjoy any of the delightful activities available in our local community. Patient as she was, I could see it was taking a dramatic toll on our marriage and our family. Desperate to get relief, I turned to prayer, and realized that my prayer must result in immediate action--the direction and process of that action is what brought me to this place, to write this blog, to engage with the process with which I have been inspired, and to share the raw and ragged inspiration that pushed me outside myself--beyond what I ever thought possible--to engage with who I was created to be--the possibility of who my Creator made me to be, and become the person my wife and sons deserve to have in their lives as a man, husband, Pa, leader, and mentor for life and the empowered pursuit of it, brought about by thinking rightly, engaging fully, and aligning heart and mind with the heart and mind of the Almighty Himself.

To share this journey is the purpose and intent of this blog. My only hope is that it may be of use and value to someone along the way who may relate to the human process and also find empowerment through the engagement of the one thing I have discovered that brings the mind and heart to active and inspired alignment--Gratitude.

Gratitude is something we do--it is a verb--it is not something we merely possess. One must say it, do it, think it, and live it, until Gratitude becomes a steadiness and way of mind that overcomes all else--The Grateful Pa

Things happen, they do not happen to us, they just happen--Native American Proverb