Gratitude

This morning I opened my emails to find an email from Andy White http://www.58twelve.com/ and felt compelled to share what he said with you.   We all, no matter how well off, financially or emotionally, have a tendency to moan about what we don't have instead of being grateful for what we do have.  Andy's words have a great relevance to my work with Children in Distress and to your support of CID.  Here is what he wrote:-

Do you own a car? Only 8% of the world do, so that means 92% don't. And that means that whatever type of car you have, if you have one, you are privileged.  Do you enjoy clean, disease-free, running water from your kitchen tap? More than one billion people don't have access to clean drinking water, never mind a kitchen tap. That figure includes an estimated 400 million children - more than the entire population of the USA.  And, because unclean water is full of nasty stuff, it causes illness resulting in somewhere around 443 million school days being missed every year.

If you're like me, you don't like feeling hungry. But you probably don't have to put up with that feeling for longer than it takes you to find a snack, right? But around 800 million people won't eat anything at all today. Nothing at all. And about 300 million of those people will be children.  So is it any wonder that, every couple of seconds, someone dies from hunger?

Do you complain when the power gets cut or the internet goes down? I know I do.

But I have no right to complain. Approximately 1.6 billion people - that's about a quarter of the world's population - live without any electricity at all. Can you imagine life without electricity? I can't.

 

When you get passed over for a raise, or miss out on that bonus, it sucks. But what sucks more is that nearly half the world's population — that's more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. That's 3 billion people living on less than you and I may spend on a coffee.  And what about the 1.3 billion people who live in extreme poverty - less than $1.25 a day?

The contrasts between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' are stark.

Here's an example of that contrast: Americans spend $20 billion per year on ice-cream - yes, ice-cream - while around 800 million people worldwide don't have anything to eat at all, never mind a desert.  And I'm not beating on Americans - I am quite sure other countries could provide equally horrifying statistics - I just don't have them to hand.  And that $20 billion spent on ice-cream would go half way to raising the approximately $40 billion it would take to offer basic education, clean water and sanitation, reproductive health for women, and basic health and nutrition to every person in every developing country.

Look, I didn't mean to wreck your Sunday morning, but these things are worth thinking about.

And I've been thinking about them a lot recently. Not specifically the situations I just shared with you, but the way I view my own life in a world where, as I type these words, someone is starving to death, or drinking water that will kill them.  You see, we gauge our lives based on what we see around us - among our peer groups and in our neighbourhoods. And, we get sucked into an 'I need more than I have to be OK' mind-set.

But the problem with that mindset is that you lose sight of just how 'rich' you are.

You see, when you focus on what you don't have, you cast aside the blessing you already hold in your hand. And without an attitude of gratitude, you will never enjoy all that life wants to give you.  If your starting point is not gratitude, you will always be discontent. You will always be looking for more, striving, reaching, wanting.  I know how this works. Over the years, I have missed the fullness of so many blessings because I never paused to hold the gift that had been placed in my hand so that I could celebrate and enjoy it.

I still fall into that trap, but I'm working on cultivating an attitude of gratitude. And all those stark statistics I gave you remind me just how lucky I am to have what I do have, and how ungrateful I am to lament what I do not.

So what do you think about gratitude? Does it come easily to you or, like me, do you need to work on it? What do you do to make sure it's a part of your make up?

Powerful words huh?  They certainly set me thinking! I know that many of you are grateful for what you have; otherwise you wouldn't be helping CID to look after the children we care for and for that support I, and my colleagues both here in the UK and Romania are extremely GRATEFUL.  Please encourage more of your family and friends to be grateful for what they have and to show that gratitude by supporting those who are not so well off.  Thank you :)

Jane x

 

The hardest job I ever had...............................

My Mum (now age 95!) was chatting to her friend and I overheard her say “The hardest job I ever had was teaching our Jane to cast on”. Of course she was referring to teaching me to knit. She quickly followed this statement with a little bit of a boast; “Before you knew where she was, she was casting on for the whole class!” Phew, it must have clicked with me eventually!!

Now, anybody who knows me, knows that I just love knitting and any other kind of crafts I can get my hands on! But……………..I can still remember being age 5 in Miss Palmer’s reception class knitting dishcloths and proudly holding up my very first finished one, only to realise with dismay that it had a huge hole in the middle where I had dropped lots of stitches! Perhaps at that point I COULD cast on but hadn’t quite learnt that if I dropped a stitch I was required to pick it up again! I’m delighted to say that I have improved since then J

I bring my love of crafts into my work for CID by leading the Handcrafters’ Guild; we have over 140 members who knit, crochet, sew, make greetings cards and other items to send to Romania to help clothe the children we care for and also to sell some to raise funds for the charity. I also try to encourage other friends of the charity to make blankets, clothes and toys for the children. One of the girls (Ionela) at St Laurence’s, Cernavoda now makes herself some money embroidering exquisite table mats and runners and selling them; a craft she learnt from me during my visits to St Laurence’s.
My latest foray into the world of crafts is to set up the Children in Distress Yarn Shop http://childrenindistress.yarnshopping.com/ to not only bring our Guild members and other supporters some very affordable yarns but also to (hopefully) raise some much needed funds for the charity.

Ever since learning that ‘pride comes before a fall’ (the dishcloth episode!) I have tried to do my best at whatever I was doing at that precise moment. A J Leon, who I had the privilege of meeting some years back, says in his blog ‘The Pursuit of Everything’ - Produce your best work every single time. Or produce nothing. Anything in the middle is a waste of your time and our attention. Well, when I was 5 years old, there was nothing in the middle of my dishcloth and it WAS a waste of my time! However at that time I was producing the best work I could.

What was the hardest job you ever had?
Jane x

PS If you'd like to join our Handcrafters' Guild, drop me a line at janerussell@childrenindistress.org.uk