As we close in on Christmas 2013,  I am fortunate to be able to get my tasks completed with less stress than I have had in years.  I rise when I wake, enjoy my coffee, breakfast and kitties before picking up the day’s tasks, be it accounting work, Christmas wrapping or errands, and am gracefully flowing into Christmas with all of the joys of the season filling my very soul.

Tonight, I was fortunate enough to spend the evening dancing, sharing, loving and exuding joy with my dance friends.  In fact, we were so full of joy that Santa Claus had to come join the fun!  The love, the camaraderie, the laughter, the shared jokes it was all there!

Whether it was one of my dance partners keeping me laughing through three or four two step songs and a couple of couples’ dances, or another friend not so subtly trying to find me a man, it was all done with love and affection, and the sharing of the moments was extra special tonight!

I know that, in the midst of it all, I’ll finish the wrapping, find Mathom’s missing stocking, get a clean bill of health for Chris’ beautiful fluffy boy, Snowball, so he can finally play with Dylan without the bathroom door between them, and be ready for our traditional Jewish Christmas Eve dinner with time to spare.  In fact, I might even get some work done on my book between now and then if luck is with me!

Although I have carried my gratitude throughout the year, via my blog, my Joy Jar, and just every day thankfulness for all the blessing I have been enjoying, I feel that gratitude almost to the point of overwhelming right now.

I have enough work, enough money, enough time, and best of all, more than enough love and friendship!  I am one very lucky woman!  All of those twisting, winding, switchbacking roads I’ve traveled have led me here, and without the challenges along the way, I wouldn’t have gotten to this wonderful, amazing place filled with the most incredible people I’ve ever seen!  Each and every one of them inspires me in their own way, and my life is fuller and more beautiful for the experiences!

So tonight, I’m going to name a few names, and show my gratitude to those who inspire me.

My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful to Judy and Ron and Barb and Michelle and Meaghan who have helped me find my spiritual path.
2. I am grateful to Heather and Candy who have believed in me even when I lost sight of what was truly important, and without whom, I might never have taken the leap of faith which has me at nearly 60,000 words of the first book in my Transition Series.
3. I am grateful to Merry and Bea and Lorna and Deb and Julie and Barbara and Barb and Frankie and Richard and so many more for reminding me what an amazing place I was able to grow up in, and look back upon, and see what incredible adults we have become for the experience.
4. I am grateful to Heather and Mathom who make life interesting and fun and unusual…but never, ever boring!
5. I am grateful to Jesse and Darian who have been loyal friends to my daughter, and have added depth to my life for many years now.
6. I am grateful to Dezi and Brian, Linda and Paul, Judy and Ron, Joy and Bruno, Lisa and Ric and, again, so many others who have,  shown me, not only that we can all live and love together no matter what our spiritual path, nor what we call the positive thoughts we send each other, be it prayer, energy, or anything else, but that deep. abiding love exists for all of us, no matter how far we might have drifted away from it in our search for ourselves.
7. And finally, I am grateful for the people I met through the Ultimate Blog Challenge, like Liz and Deb, who have helped me to not only boost the traffic on this blog, but to gain the confidence to follow my dream as they’ve followed theirs.

I love you all, and can’t even find the words to tell you how much I appreciate your being a part of my life.

Love and light.  (and happy holidays, whatever you might celebrate!)