Notes from this Episode:

Background

• If you are listening to this podcast in real time, it is Thanksgiving Day, a holiday for Americans in which we thank God for our country, our founding, and consider all of the gifts that God has given to us.
• As I prepared for this podcast, I realized that the things I am most grateful for are the gifts of the unexpected, and hopefully it will encourage you to look at unexpected things in your life and see how you can be grateful for them.

Pregnant on God’s Time Not Mine

• We struggled to get pregnant right after we got married, and it ended up taking two years to have a baby.
• This led to the realization that I am not in control and that God’s timing in all things and His Will for me are truly, better then when I try to control or argue with Him.
• I learned to appreciate my children more when they were on God’s timing rather than mine.

Leaving a Lucrative Career

• My husband worked for the fancy law firm and was on the fast track in the firm, but it was killing his soul and destroying the marriage and family life we both had as our goal.
• So we gave up the beautiful vacations, the cars, the country club scene, and the financial security because our bigger goal was a marriage and family life that was happy and loving and long lasting.

Thankful for Marital Problems

• Our marriage problems tested our commitment to achieving that ultimate goal together, that large and happy and faith-filled family.
• We each grew in selflessness, generosity, and understanding for each other. Now, we look to each other with a new appreciation, with more empathy and curiosity about why the other responds the way they do, rather than holding tight to the stories and beliefs we had about each other.
• We had to grow in giving up our individual will for our collective will for our family.

Thankful for Stage III Colon Cancer

• We both learned to trust God and realized that this was His way of teaching us to trust Him.
• Michael and I learned to choose to be positive rather than give in to fear, and we saw clearly how our united front was critical to the tone of the home and to our children’s mental state.

Our Children’s Different Personalities

• Our seven children have seven distinct personalities, and within those different personalities, there is a complexity of strengths and weaknesses.
• I had to learn to be patient and curious about what they did and how best I could help them become all that God created them to be
• As a mother, I learned to be tender, patient, generous, orderly, and I learned that I was stronger than I ever thought possible.

Thankful for my Faith

• I grew up in a faith-filled family, but I was not really in relationship with God, and I did not really learn about my faith until I went on Opus Dei retreat.
• I learned that I had a vocation and that God placed me here with my husband and children, and that He was depending on me to bring them to Him.   Suddenly, everything in my day had meaning.

Thankful for New Understanding

• The last thing I am grateful for is really my most recent gift and is the gift of understanding that my thoughts create my feelings, they inform my actions, and they create my results.
• I wish I had known all of this back in the early days of my marriage so that I could step back and be curious about who my husband is, why he does what he does, and see that what I think about it can change.
• Just because I am offered a thought in my brain, does not make it true, and it does not mean I have to hold onto it – I can coach myself out of it.

Final Thoughts

• I hope this gives you an opportunity to think about what you are grateful for.
  • Complete a thought download and write down all the things that you are grateful for.
  • Our brains, which always want to offer the negative, will always tell us what is going wrong, why we are unhappy, and how somebody else has it better.
  • Everybody has issues, but how do you want to think about them?
    • Are they opportunities for growth or are they opportunities to just put another chain on your life and your heart?
    • I hope that you will see that you have more to be grateful for and thankful for than you have to suffer with.