Wednesday reflection

 Wednesday Reflection – Grateful for the Journey, Choosing Peace in Hard Times

This morning I woke up around 2:15 and by 2:22 I was already on my yoga mat, and right away I felt like I was given a choice—to be happy, to feel sorry for myself, or to give thanks—and I chose happiness and gratitude, and for the first time since last year I completed 700 push-ups with my yoga practice in under two and a half hours, a release of the grief I have carried since the king of my village passed, and afterward I jogged to church where a cat ran to greet me and a young man at a construction site reminded me to share gratitude for health and work as I told him how after my stroke I could barely walk and how my slow movements became my job, which is why I want to run another 100 miles because health is everything and gratitude changes everything, and even with the pain in my hips I feel strength and growth, and in church I drifted between half-asleep and half-meditating until it came to me that God is silence, prayer is silence, and in that stillness I could see clearly that many children will rebel when they grow older because their teachers are not prepared to guide them spiritually, and I realized I must spend more time in places that feed me instead of drain me because anything that robs us of peace is also a kind of abuse, and so today I chose peace, I chose gratitude, I chose silence, and as I shared later at a meditation gathering about how discipline, yoga, and meditation have carried me through hard times, I could see the surprise in people’s eyes because while it may be easy to read such lessons in books, to live them is shocking, yet for me it is the fruit of years of practice, and so tonight I rest in the strength of knowing that even in uncertain circumstances I can turn hardship into growth, and I continue my run with joy, gratitude, and peace in my heart.