Abundance

Snow Art

http://blog.inspirationbygod.net/3478/a-real-live-snow-man-simon-beck/

Abundant Boxing Day  - http://www.factmonster.com/spot/boxingday1.html

An interesting tradition that is part of England's holidays.  Believed to be a time when servants were thanked by giving them boxes of food.  I suspect that the Ladies didn't want to have to eat Christmas left overs and sent them home with the servants.  :)

Now, it is a day to return unwanted gifts and snatch up bargain prices for Christmas decorations and wrapping paper. 

Abundant is a word often foreign to victims and survivors.  The main crux of being a victim or survivor is to be without the things needed...being without food, without safety, without protection, without connection, without... I could name all sorts of different withouts.  Abundance is synonymous with plentiful.  Enough for yourself and plenty to share I believe is the essence of abundance.  I also learned that it is a state of mind.  When we lived in Washington State, we moved there with no job but a hope for a future.  We had an uninsured baby, no medical insurance due to no job.  We were worried about how to cover this cost.  At this time, the first group of Boat People landed in Seattle.  A baby was born on board and they had nothing for the baby.  From my supply of baby clothes for my baby I was able to pull an entire bag of baby clothes and blankets to give away that still kept me with plenty for our own daughter.  As I study thriving and abundant living, I am learning that when I look at what others have and what I think I should have, I see what I am without.  When I take an inventory of what I do have and the resources available to me...I start to see what I do have.  I have a home, food on the table, friends and family that I just spent a lovely day with or emailing or texting or Facebooking.  I use Boxing Day as a year end inventory and consider, "If I needed to give some of what I have to someone else, what do I have to share?"  Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks, Boxing Day is a day to appreciate the abundance I am now blessed with.  I am learning that the pathway from victim to survivor does not end in thriving but actually takes me into abundance.  My prayer is for each person to recognize the abundance in their life.  I am thinking about all the changes I made this past year and how thriving is now part of my everyday life instead of just a now and again thing. Happy Boxing day.