Thankful

Last year when I was living in Sierra Leone my sister sent me a book called One Thousand Gifts. It was a great book that helped me changed my outlook on my situation there. It helped me find joy in everyday things I encountered. In the stressors I had, I was able to think about and notice the little things which caused me to see each situation differently. It helped me to persevere through some difficult times.

Last Sunday I decided to start a list. I have been making a list of things I am thankful for. It has helped me change the way I have looked at some of the situations I encountered this week. As I started writing this list I kept having an overwhelming urge to write a list of challenges this week as well. I didn't. I needed to focus on the blessings of my days. Yes, there were days I just wanted to come home and crawl back into my bed, turn on my ac and sleep, but when you take the time to stop and look around, you notice blessings in the midst of challenges. Here are a glimpse of things I have been thankful for over the past six days:

• Having a flashlight on my phone
• I have not gotten malaria this year
• Packing nyquil/dayquil when I came
• Purple flowers growing among the corn stalks being harvested
• Patients being discharged to the village
• Dead earwigs
• Bananas erupting from their pods on the pigmy banana tree
• Moringa trees growing larger
• Women returning on time for their surgical appointments
• Ants marching creating veins in the sand
• A newly hired nurse
• Long walks home
• Skirts that make you walk a step slower
• Receiving two roosters as a thank you gift inside the hospital
• A finished malaria policy
• Kosai
• Old patients returning dry
• Watching people harvest their crops
• Women pounding their grains
• Listening to country music in the car
• With the windows down
• At night
• Turning down country music and rolling up the windows while passing through checkpoints
• Water filters that make brown water drinkable
• Friends who will protect me from bats
• Two hens purchased for the roosters so we can have eggs
• Air conditioning in my bedroom
• Watching patients doing rounds on each other--on the fresh post-op patients to make sure they are ok
• Losing patients but then finding them sitting under a tree in the dirt behind the OR
• Training nurses to take over my jobs
• Nurses who work hard
• Rice and beans for lunch
• Learning a new word in hausa and using it appropriately 
• Just standing in the pharmacy (the only room in the ward with air conditioning)
• Being told I can go to Niamey with Ashley to say goodbye
• The way the young patients wear their gowns
• Having my massive set of keys reduced by three
• Excitement by patients who are brought into the ward for surgery 
• Bottle of some sort of sugared nuts
• Chocolate in the grocery store
• Buying a purple shirt at Wrangler
• Witnessing an ultrasound of a patient who did not know she was pregnant
• Showing this woman her child inside her womb
• Seeing the tiny hands, feet, spine and all four chambers of this tiny heart beating inside her