Gratitude —The Path to Grace
Gratitude is the recognition of grace moving quietly through our lives.
It’s the awareness of Love—steady, devoted, unwavering—shaping what we cannot always see, protecting what we sometimes forget, guiding us with a tenderness that asks for nothing in return.
People cross our paths, circumstances rise and fall, and each becomes a teacher. Through them, Life lifts us into a deeper understanding of trust, surrender, and the subtle architecture of grace.
Gratitude has a way of softening the edges of worry and dissolving the weight of doubt. It wraps the heart in a spacious, reassuring embrace and whispers, You’re held. You’re guided. You’re not alone.
What I love most about grace is that it cannot be earned and it cannot be lost. It is Love complete—present, inherent, without condition. It meets us exactly where we are and brings us gently toward who we’re becoming.
This morning, as I sit in gratitude, I ask for forgiveness for the moments I’ve faltered or forgotten. And I know the forgiveness I’m seeking comes from within. It’s my own recognition that gratitude always reveals what remains after the storm: the quiet insights, the softened truths, the tender growth waiting beneath the rubble of old fears.
They are enough. They are Life’s bloodstream, moving us forward, making room for newness.
Thank you, Grace, for showing me that I am never truly alone in the dark. Even when my eyes can’t yet adjust, answers gather around me. Companions appear. The gentle hum of inner integrity steadies the way. Gratitude opens my eyes to what is—and what has always been.
Its light is soft and dappled, like morning sun slipping through the trees outside my window. It illuminates memory and presence in the same breath:
The warm laughter shared at the back of a bus on long drives across Morocco’s desert roads.
A breeze stirring the heather on a solitary walk over a mountain pass in Spain. And the companionship of a new friend stepping beside me for hours through vineyards and valleys that stretch to the horizon.
My grandsons’ giggles and silly faces crowding the phone screen.
An afternoon paddle with my husband on a quiet river, each stroke a meditation.
The deep contentment after a call with a sister-friend—catching up on family, speaking honestly about struggles, celebrating the ideas that lift us beyond them.
Watching my grown children build their own lives, and gather with one another even when I cannot be there. There is a beauty in witnessing their bonds deepen on their own terms—a reminder that love multiplies as it matures. Their connection is one of grace’s sweetest confirmations.
And this year, working beside my daughter—watching her navigate motherhood while stepping into new opportunities to nurture healing sisterhood—is precious, and healing. What moves me most is witnessing her discover her own growth within this sacred space.
Grace moves the women who nurture and expand the vision of Honest Heart Journeys. I am humbled by those who walked tirelessly beside me in the earliest days, carrying the spark forward when the path was unknown and steep. And those who are helping carry it now when possibilities are infinite and the road calls for patient priorities and trust.
We are building something alive together. And we are blessed as we bless.
Grace reminds us that even when miles stretch between us and someone we cherish—even when time has slipped by since we last sat face to face—Love doesn’t measure distance. It doesn’t know scarcity. It celebrates the unique qualities we adore in one another—the precious gems planted within each soul.
Only our assumptions create separation. Only our fears draw lines where none truly exist.
So I release the images that cloud my seeing—doubt, distance, the imagined narratives of what others may think—and I lean into the gracious, living pictures that appear when I no longer believe those fears.
I am grateful for freedom. Grateful for clarity. Grateful for the peace that comes when trust becomes my posture.
I am grateful for the wide inner vistas that open when I rest in Grace, when I remind my ego that we are held, that we are here to witness the unfolding of something larger, softer, truer than we can ever force.
“You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.” — The Message, Matthew 5.
Gratitude teaches me that nothing essential is ever missing—that Love keeps showing up in new forms, new faces, new revelations. I want to stay awake to the gentle invitations Grace places before me each day.
To notice the beauty in the ordinary.
To honor the women walking beside me in sisterhood.
To cherish the bonds that grow even when I’m not there to witness every moment.
To trust the whispers that rise within when I become still enough to hear them.
May gratitude keep opening our eyes—yours and mine—to the radiance of what is here, the constancy of what has always been, and the promise of what is becoming.
We are guided.
We are held.
We are deeply, endlessly loved.
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