Counting Your Blessings

I miss baking my 100 dozen holiday cookies.  I don't miss the stress of making all those cookies. I don't miss how my immune system would get run down.  I don't miss how sick I got each and every year.  I miss watching Christmas movies nonstop for 4 weeks.  Most of all, I miss how my friends came over to help.  I miss the warmth and  camaraderie of having everyone and their daughter here baking cookies in my kitchen with White Christmas playing in the background.  I was reminded of a song from that movie just this week, "Counting Your Blessings."  This past year (and two years before that), the family law section of our local Bar has put on an all-day Symposium.  OK, officially,  it is the family law section, but it really is just two of us from the section who organize and present it. Each of our symposiums has been awarded the state bar association's award for service to the bar.  This year, our local bar decided to present it to me at our annual meeting.  Our annual meeting is not usually well attended, so I expected to receive the award in a mostly empty courtroom.  That was not to be.  Two of my friends from the county down the road made the trip up the road in Washington DC rush hour to be there for me.  One of them isn't even a member of the local bar up the road.  It almost made me cry to have people who cared about me in that courtroom....and absolutely made me count my blessings.

You see, I've had a particularly awful year.  I'm not going to go into details because they aren't really important to this post.  Just trust me on this.  The year has made me count my blessings and my friends.  Just like most of my clients here in the Trenches.  Most of them are having the worst years of their lives.  They've found that not only are they losing their spouse, they're also losing their friends.  It's funny how fair weather most of our friends really are.  Most of my clients come into my office feeling that their life is a series of awards received in an empty room.  They're looking at it all wrong.  I know when everything in your life is going wrong, it's easy to focus on the negative. That's human nature - negative begets negative.  The problem is that when everything in your life is going badly, continuing to focus on the negative just ensures that you stay down.  Sometimes, all it takes to start you toward finding your way out of the darkness is knowing you have one or two friends who will drive up the road in rush hour traffic to see the bar president hand you an award.  It doesn't sound like much, but it's actually everything.  Count your blessings; and you have plenty of them, even if it doesn't seem like it.  Here in the Trenches.