My Fifth Step to Harvest Life Gracefully  Express gratitude,then spread the Good News about how to harvest life gracefully and find purpose in life to others, so that they too, may be able to harvest life gracefully.

Us, humans spend so much time whining and complaining about what we do not have, instead of looking at what we do have and feel grateful and appreciate these things. I am a true believer, if I pray or meditate to my higher power and ask for something, that we will receive. In the bible it states "Ask and you shall receive." Mathew 21:22 . This may sound deceiving to some because of all of the praying we do and still not get what we want. First of all I want to say, there is more to it than just praying. How strong is your faith? Do you really believe and trust in your higher power? Do you still continue to worry and complain about what you want? Praying and meditation is good, but after praying you need to leave it in God's hands. Why will God give what you want if you continue to cry about what you don't have? Why will you be bless if you don't appreciate what you do have? I believe that God or the higher power will not bless us unless we have a strong faith, meaning, let go of what we are concern about into his hands, be patience and wait for his response, plus we need to appreciate and be grateful for what we do have.Sometimes what we want is not good for us, the higher power sees this and will respond to its' like. The higher power is looking out for us and does know what is better for us than what we think is best. At times like that we need to trust that the higher power does know what he is doing and that it is for our own good!

One may say that my life is in such a shamble, I can't find anything to be grateful for. This is not true, you can start with feeling grateful for being alive, then you can go from that to being grateful for who you are and what you represent no matter what your situation may be, we all have great attributes about ourselves that deserves appreciation. Family, friends, food, shelter, health, or just waking up in the morning, are all things we can concentrate on being grateful for. Start with the small things, make a list of these things. I can almost guarantee as you are making this list you will find more and more things to appreciate, that you had been taking for granted.

I found that even the smallest things in life should not be taken for granted, they all deserve our appreciation. Base on my own personal experience, recently I had surgery for a bladder lift. For an month after surgery I suffer from a urinary retention and was not able to urinate on my own; therefore I had to wear a catheter. This was very uncomfortable and irritated my bladder and urinary tract. Finally, when I was able to urinate, I remember thinking to myself, I would not ever, take urinating for granted again. I know this may sound silly, to appreciate our own bodily functions, but once you lose a body function, you will realize how that function is so important and you will gain appreciation for it.Basically what I am saying, there is a lot that we can find to show appreciation for, and these things deserve to be praised and offer thanksgiving to our higher power, for allowing us to have these things.

The second part of this step is to spread the good news, there is a special feeling we get when we share good news to others, especially when the good news is accepted by the one it is told to. Sharing what we know also make us stronger in our convictions and beliefs. It help us to continue on the journey to achieve our goals and dreams. I believe, we have a responsibility of being a service to others', this includes sharing our knowledge, and offer encouragement as needed.

To sum everything up, this step means to give praise and thanks to our higher power for all we have, and to be a service to others, so they can see though us that it is possible to harvest life gracefully. In doing so, this will keep us stronger in our own continuation of our journey to achieve our goals and dreams.

I am a survivor of abuse and learned how to harvest life gracefully. Visit my blog as I write my story about my life. I am an activist on promoting abuse awareness, I will be posting information about abuse in the effort to end abuse, as well, on positive living. /