Gratitude for Gifts

I had an wonderful phone call this afternoon which has prompted my gratitude list for this evening.

1.  I am grateful for Dr. Victoria Gonzalez.  During our conversation today, she told me that she thought I was a good teacher.  She thought that I would be good at teaching English to people who didn't know any at all.  For those who don't know, she's the reading specialist for Dona Ana Community College.  I was blessed to teach reading for this first time this past semester.  It was a wonderful experience for me and my students did really well.  I actually got to hear someone say that she didn't know why I wasn't assigned another reading class because she wanted me to teach another one.  I met her this past semester and for the spring the enrollment is really low.  She encouraged me to be a part of the training workshops throughout the semester.  She taught in the same room I did right before me.  Bless her heart, Dr. Gonzalez would leave things all the time on the desk.  I was blessed to constantly give her her belongs back.  I love losers because I am a finder.  She lost a lot for me to find.  She has a lot of experience teaching that and what I don't.  It was a blessing to her say that I was good at it; I don't hear that very much at all.  There were a lot of things that she said I would be good at teaching and doing.  She gave me a lot of gifts during our conversation.

2.  I am grateful for Connie Finke.  The conversation I had with her about being an inter-faith person and being a Christian at a Jewish Temple was wonderful.  We had a good time talking with each other and sharing devotion information.  It was a wonderful time.  She's fun and has her own wisdom.  I like that the conversation that I had with her prompted me to look into my Marian devotions again and think about the things within my own tradition that spring from Catholicism.  I had some wonderful prayer time with my Saint Augustine's Prayer Book again which I really like.  I feel more comfortable with it and have for about 7 or 8 years when I have my own person prayer time throughout the day.  I keep two prayer books and a devotion by my bed: 1) Saint Augustine's Prayer Book, 2) Prayers of Christian Consolation, and 3) the Rosary with the Luminous Mysteries.  Connie encourages me to continue to connect with the Blessed Virgin Mary and with Jesus throughout the day.  She is quite a gift to me.

3.  I am grateful for the Holocaust Museum in El Paso, TX.  I was there for the first time this past weekend.  I walked through the exhibit after being at the memorial for Sara Hauptman.  May her memory be a blessing.  I had an experience that I didn't know was going to happen.  I am very leary of public restrooms for several reasons and experiences.  I have been confronted in several of them due to my gender.  I never know what is going to happen in them and when I saw the shower heads in the exhibit which replicated the showers in Auschwitz which poured Zyklon B gas into the rooms, I became nauseous.  The not knowing what would happen in a locker room has been enough of a prohibitive experience for me to keep me out of gymnasiums as well as public bathrooms, unless they were single use restrooms, for a long time.  The fear was so amplified in the museum's exhibit that I thought I was going to pass out.  Thank God that I can choose whether or not to go into the bathrooms and locker rooms that are in society.

4.  I am grateful for the experiences that I have had getting to teach at another university.  I have been looking forward to the experience for a long time.  I am going to have a hybrid class.  I like that I will be able to teach partially online again.

5.  I am grateful for people I have met who just do the business that they are there to do.  I am happy that I know that there are people who are forthright about their business practices and don't make side deals about everything.  I am grateful to know people who will just do the work that they have been given to do instead of looking the other way, making excuses, blaming others, or trying to find ways to get out of doing the work.  I think it is why I like libraries.  I've never haggled with a librarian over checking out a book.  Thank God.        

All of these gifts have been given to me to help balance out the rest of my experiences right now.  It is important to know that I am not only experiencing problems in my life, but have a lot of encouragement and support for the positive things that I am doing.  It is wonderful to know that I have been blessed with so many positive things and trusted to work through the negative experiences in my life.