Gratitude

I am following my friend Mel's wonderful example by participating in the month of gratitude started by the South Breeze Blog. She and I both participated in a 5K run for our friend Amber who is fighting Inflammatory Breast Cancer Stage 4. This is most often terminal. She has been fighting since May 2007.

After my disastrous 5K in July I was working pretty diligently to get ready for a good time. Champ and I had been running a pretty challenging route and got down to 27 minutes. I was thrilled. Saturday I got ready and decided at the last minute to take Champ with me. He was thrilled. He got hair sprayed pink in support of the fight against breast cancer and was ready to go. Until the crowd cheered for Amber and her family. Clapping was a new thing for him and running with a huge crowd was another.

I knew it was not going to be a personal best time when a quarter of a mile down the road Champ had to stop and poop, I dropped my MP3 player out of my pocket and I was too hot in my pants and shirt. So Champ and I decided to just enjoy it. And after 2poop stops and picking a thorn out of his paw we finished only 4 minutes behind our average! And Champ got to be pink.

So during the run I kept telling myself I am so grateful that I have this body that will work for me. That I can do hard things and that I am able to run. I will run to show my gratitude for Amber and her excellent example of faith. I will run because I am grateful for my health. I will run for Amber when she cannot.

And tonight while reading in a May 2007 posting Amber summed it all up by being grateful for a day spent in the park with 2 of her 5 children. What a lesson to me from a mother my age, with children the same ages as mine, who is faced with an adversity that she never saw coming. Her favorite quote, "Each day is a gift that is why it is called the present."