Grateful

There are moments, actually a lot of these are happening lately, where I am just awash with feelings of being grateful for my life and where and who I am now.  It's an amazing feeling.  Life can be so hard, full of trials, set backs and frustrations but when one is at peace in one's life all those things are just little blips.  
I am currently reading "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work".  I'm reading it for my own therapeutic education and I don't like giving books to clients without reading them myself.  The last thing I want is someone to refer or ask a question about a book that I've given and I have no idea what they are talking about!  
I just finished chapter 4 and I am really liking it.  Like most things when it comes to therapy, it's the simple things that make the biggest impact and that awareness is SO important. Reading this I reflect on past relationships and on my current one.  Some of the "pointers" that have been mentioned in the book I see in myself but it's only happened with time, and I also see the negatives.  Things I've done in the past that was not conducive to ensuring the relationship was strong.  One of the main things is maintaining that friendship and staying curious about the other person.  Regularly having talks about anything under the sun and I see Joe and I doing this.  We'll have discussions about politics, religion, the meaning of it all.... sometimes we are not on the same page but we continue to respect each other as individuals and learn from each other's different perspectives.
There are exercises in the book and I'm excited to pull Joe into my therapeutic learning.  He's been game before, doing quizzes and exercises with me so I think he'll be down.  He's currently TDY in Alaska right now, comes back for a few days then back out to California.  
I am so grateful for the man in my life right now!  It's a blessing that we found ourselves back together after all of these years.

I'm also grateful for my friends and all the experiences I've had since leaving Utah.  

This month marked a year since I graduated from UofU.  Since then....I've retired from the AF, moved to North Carolina (got to see some awesome parts of that state), checked out Boston, hung out in Baltimore, moved to Florida, got a job working with military, got to see New Orleans and Savannah....I've had some stressors and sadness with losing Sami and seeing my parents divorce. But Sami is no longer struggling and my parents seem to have found happiness in their own way moving forward!  

Life is all about LIVING! The good, the bad, the ugly aspects of it and the struggle is not always searching for something, fighting what is happening, but being present and feeling what is meant to be felt and then letting it go making room for the next experience in your life.  It's taken me awhile to get to that, and I have moments and days where I can't let go or be present but I keep moving forward.  Because of the switch I have found moments of peace, more moments of happiness, and I feel truly blessed!