Thank You Letter

Last week, I shared how to survive if you fall the the ice (or face any major crisis). My post generated a few emails from concerned friends. I am so thankful for this circle of support. 2018 in general has been a year of many significant ups and downs. It would be so easy to say, “I’ll be thankful when this year is over and I can move on.” But the reality is that each difficulty has revealed a multitude of blessings. I would not give those up just to not experience that pain that came, too.

I wanted to share my journey and experience because our personal lives are not separate from our work lives. We just have ‘life’. When I am focused on all that is not going well, I miss the lessons and the blessings. I find that working and thinking to be impossible. To put it bluntly, my productivity diminishes.

So last night, I purchased a pack of thank you note cards with the intent to thank each of the challenges I have experienced recently. One of the major challenges was in acquiring a service dog for my son.  

Here is the note I wrote to this challenge:

Thank you so much for the tremendous blessing you have given us. Two weeks ago we sent you a payment, you accepted that payment and sent us a notice on that same day to let us know that your facility would be closing. A week later we received notice of your bankruptcy. I couldn’t have imagined in that moment the blessings that would come from your actions. Actions that seemed negligent and extremely hurtful, even criminal.
Two weeks later though, the gifts are coming in more quickly than the pain and shock of that email. 

In two short weeks, this is what we have received that is even better than what we could have imagined:
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1. We have met and bonded with other families that are in the same experience as us. Having a special needs child (or two in our case) can be isolating. But in these last two weeks we met and connected with other families just like ours. There is so much strength in knowing that you are not alone. 
   
   
2. Receiving and outpouring of love and support from people we know and others we didn’t (yet) know. In a time when it would have been easy to allow fear to step in, we openly rejected fear and accepted the help of complete strangers to help our dog and us. It is a difficult thing to accept help but even harder to do so when there is little way to reciprocate. The only option is to pay it forward. We are excited to do so and to be the light and hope for others in their time of need.
   
   
3. Having our dog trained by a loving family in their home close to our home so that we can have a much better outcome for our family. In the twenty four hours since Ben has been with the new trainer we have received 8 photos (we had 3 over two months prior) AND we can see him being loved on in just the way we would love on him. It is so wonderful to know that someone else cares about him as much as we do.
   
   
4. Being able to meet Ben and snuggle him. He is just the sweetest dog and we are excited to be his family.
   
   
5. Meeting Dave at Show Me Your Dog. Our interactions have been so wonderful. He is knowledgeable and supportive and honest with us. We would have never met him, had it not been for you!
   
   
6. Learning more about service dog training and becoming more connected into this community. Service dogs we a complete black hole for us when we started in August. But now we know so much more and understand the process much better than we did. I love to learn and this has been a learning experience. 
   
   
7. Your timing was perfect. I may have been inclined to think that I could have taken on another project if this had happened at another time when I wasn’t so completely overwhelmed. To be honest, that would have been terrible all around. Ben would not have received the training he needed, Josh would not have received a service dog, I would have taken off more than I could handle. But because of the timing, the only option I had was to find someone else to train our pup. It is truly the best possible situation.
   
   

Thank you so much for this and I am sure, other blessings that are on the way.

From just one challenge, we received no less than seven major blessings. What challenges are you facing today, that are blessings in disguise? I encourage you to thank each one of them.

Share in the comments how this exercise affected you.