Gratitude....I believe that we all think that we feel grateful about a variety of things in our lives. That feeling of gratefulness is usually fleeting, short lived and conditional. The moment passes, the words and feelings fade. And very often this gratitude comes after a challenge of some sort. When it passes, we feel grateful. But then again...after a short time, it fades.
I think this is true of most all of us. Life and busy times come back into play, and we move back into the tasks at hand.
I think that I am a person who feels grateful quite often. In my life and in my career, I see many wonderful and also very sad things happen on a daily basis. I have worked in nursing and social services for many years. I also, with my husband own a farm, a hobby farm. It is large enough to be a production farm, but we love our careers and want to continue in those occupations.
But our land and our big old barns began calling to us and we wanted to make use of these wonderful blessings in our life. So, we made began making plans to make our place into a home for animals that would not otherwise have a warm, well-nourished and safe place to life. Where they could enjoy running in grassy fields by day and then lay down in soft hay at night to safely rest and relax.
We began acquiring our sweet animals in a variety of ways. Word of mouth mostly. Pretty much everyday someone would tell us about an unwanted animal that someone did not or could not care for properly. We met people who would tell us about animals living in less than tolerable conditions. So, we would take in animals that we felt that we felt we could offer a better life and that we ourselves honestly felt that we could handle.
Our animals family grew every week. We love each and every one of them. We seemed to rescue mostly goats, sheep and llamas. But we also ended up acquiring miniature donkeys and horses. Then, we added to our group...ourselves. We started going to bird sales and we bought peacocks, pheasants, chickens and ducks. The peacocks turned out to be the best alarm system for our farm.
We would work every night after work and especially on weekends building pens and feeding systems for our growing group. We felt so satisfied and fulfilled....and grateful that we had the land, the buildings and means to help out these otherwise helpless animals. We read and learned a lot about their care. Shearing, inoculations, proper feed, trimming hooves, toenails...on and on. For some of the more difficult tasks we did hire people to do those, like hoof trimming and shearing the sheep. I would sheer the llamas. I loved spending that close time with them...they are amazing animals. I know they sensed my gentleness and they would stand still for me to clip them with scissors; I didn't want to use an loud, annoying electric sheering device on these gentle animals. It did take much more time but I loved the experience. I had to start wearing gloves because my fingers/hands were covered in calluses and they would bleed and hurt because of the opening and closing of the scissors so many hundreds of times.
It was during those peaceful clipping sessions with my llamas that I really started thinking about how very grateful I was. For everything. I started feeling both lucky and grateful all of the time.
I began choosing special times to really think about all of the ways that I was blessed.
During my morning ride to work each day, my evening personal conversations & prayers and the time I spent thinking about my animals and mostly being with my animals. I would pull off of the road on my way to work to specifically think about how blessed myself and my family were. I always took the scenic backroads route to work so that I could do just that. In the evening when I would turn off the lights and say goodnight to all of the animals in the barn, I would go into our comfortable home and either sit by our woodstove in the winter or out on our deck in warmer temperatures and take the time to think about all of our blessings.
I started journaling to expand on my feelings of gratefulness and then I began blogging also.
I knew that this was the best thing for me personally - good for me physically, mentally and emotionally. It made me feel complete...full circle...and that felt really good.
I would encourage everyone to take some time each day to think about your many blessings and be grateful for all that you do have...not give any real time or thought to the things that you feel you are missing. If you wake up each day that is the first blessing of the day. And, then many more will become evident to you as you go through your day...as long as you consciously think about gratitude.
Don't wait for the feeling to come to you because of some outside situation...
keep it present in your mind and in your heart all of the time.
The faces of country living come in many different shapes, sizes, colors and ages. Of course, every spring, we all fall in love with all of the newborn babies. And, at our farm, we also make special accomodations for our aging animals. We make sure that they have comfortable, quieter areas to live out the rest of their lives. They've added so much to our lives in their dedication to working and training hard for us. They've produced beautiful babies for us, provided us with many hours of fun and funny situations. They've earned this place of honor and respect. One example of this is one of my female llamas, Abbie. I purchased Abbie when she was pregnant. She was not very tame and would not allow me to come very close to her. But, everyday I would stand at the gate and talk to her about how beautiful she was and how beautiful her baby was going to be. I would put a container of food on the ground near me and then call her and stand very still. I wouldn't reach out and touch her even when she would finally come over and eat the food. Day after day I would move the food closer to me and eventually put my hand in the food, so that she would have to eat out of my hand. One day I was finally able to rub her as she ate. Fast forward to birth of new baby Annabelle. Annabelle was born during the day while I was at work. Abbie was waiting at the gate with her new baby for me to see when I got home from work one day. Annabelle was a spunky new baby and really did not want anything to do with me, only her mom (which is really what you want when a baby is born, so that she will be accepted and bond with her herd). Abby trusts me so much that she allows me to trim her by hand, with scissors each spring when llamas need to be sheared to keep them from overheating from the summer heat and humidity. No chute, no halter, she just stands there and patiently allows me to trim her. One really hot day, I was trimming Abbie and as yet had not even touched Annabelle. When I was finished with Abbie, she pushed her baby Annabelle over to me and must have told her that she needed to stay still and let me trim her. Because, she did. I couldn't believe it. I had been concerned about her overheating and was thinking that I was going to have to halter her to trim her. I felt that I had earned Abbie's trust so much so, that she trusted me with her most precious gift, her child. All of my llamas are very tame and they give me such joy everyday! I love to be in the barn with them. Especially when there are new babies. The mama llamas hum to their crias (babies) - it's lovely. They are the most intelligent, gentlest animals that I have ever raised, and, I've raised about every kind of animal there is. Honest gentle acts of kindness go a long way with all living things..........
