Do you know someone who’s always grateful, even in really crummy circumstances? Or how about someone who falls apart at the slightest adversity? We all experience crappy days, tough life circumstances, even serious trauma. So why do some people handle it with relative grace, while others complain about every little thing? The big difference is gratitude. Our attitude isn’t determined by our situation. Rather, it’s determined by how we frame our experiences. In this post, we’ll look at how to be grateful through the inevitable storms of life.

I describe a recent “adventure” of ours in great detail – not to complain, but to describe it fully. A LOT gets lost in translation from verbal accounts into print. So just picture me telling this story, wild arm gestures and all. We’re all laughing out loud at just how ridiculous the situation got, and how, just when it seemed to be over, more craziness ensued. I promise you I laugh about it now, even though I hardly saw the humor when it happened.

When life hands you lemons…

Tuesday started out as a Get-Everything-Done-on-My-List day. With my hubby home to take care of the kids, I planned to make LOADS of progress on my ever-expanding business To-Do list. As you can imagine from the topic of this post, things didn’t work out as planned. I accomplished a few small but important tasks in the morning. Off to a good start! Then… the internet went down. An hour later, battling frustration and a huge tension headache, I accepted the fact that I wasn’t getting any more work done, any time soon.

My first exercise in how to be grateful through life’s storms: when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. My work day effectively ended, we decided to make a spontaneous day trip to Slide Rock and escape the heat (good-BYE 108 degrees!)

There were literal storms on our trip that day, and it was raining pretty hard when we got there (Who’d have thought we’d need to check a weather report in Arizona! But that’s monsoon season for ya!). I almost said forget it, but we’d already traveled so far, we might as well stay. As it turned out, the rain cooled it down just enough to be enjoyable. I huddled underneath a tall bush trying to keep our cell phones dry as I watched my hubby and kids play in the water. We made the most of the less-than-perfect situation and had fun anyway.

Then the fun crashed to a halt. (Literally!)

The way home, however, was decidedly NOT fun! Three soccer-ball-sized rocks dislodged from the mountain and landed right in front of our car as we drove on the two-lane highway. We couldn’t avoid them. As they clunked and banged beneath us, it felt like the bottom of our car was being ripped off! We quickly got a check engine/low oil light, so we stopped. The smell of burning oil filled the air, and knew we were in trouble. Thank goodness for AAA, we thought! We didn’t know exactly where we were, however, because the GPS couldn’t pick up a signal. So we flagged down a passing motorist who told us the highway name, and that we were 19 miles North of Sedona. We made the call.

Not saved yet…

AAA couldn’t pick us up without a mile marker. Now, mind you, this is a two-lane highway with little to no shoulder, a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other. We were NOT about to walk ANYWHERE to find a mile marker. With AAA unwilling to get us, we had no choice but to drive on, even though we knew there was a SERIOUS oil leak, and quite possibly other damage.

As we searched for a mile marker – WITH a safe spot to pull off nearby, mind you – all we could do is pray that we didn’t kill our engine. We finally found a spot and pulled over, only to find that now we had NO cell phone reception! So now we were in a place where AAA would search for us, but we couldn’t call them!

We flagged down another motorist, and he agreed to call AAA on our behalf when he got to a place with cell reception.

Night fell as we waited. And waited. In my mind, I thought of our options: walk in the dark, on a road without a shoulder, and hope we’d find a place to make a phone call; spend the night in the car and take that same trek in the daylight; spend the night in the car and be killed by an axe murderer who climbed up the cliff (haha).

None of them were very good options. Finally, we saw flashing lights, which faded into the distance around the next curve. The tow truck passed us. Back to going through our options, only this time, hoping the flashing lights came back. Thankfully, they did. Our second exercise in how to be grateful through life’s storms: always hope for the best.

Just when we thought we were out of the woods…

BUT… of course, this wouldn’t be a funny disaster story without another wrinkle. The driver, ticked off because he’d been searching for over an hour, emphatically stated that he could only take TWO of us back to Phoenix in the tow truck, and he couldn’t take car seats. “I’ll tow you all into Sedona,” he said gruffly. “You can figure it out from there.”

So we rode inside the van, bouncing and swaying on TOP of the tow truck for 20 miles into town. Our eight year old cried; our four year old – bless his innocent little heart – fell asleep. The driver stopped in a shopping center parking lot and told us our options. Or, more accurately, our LACK of options. The car rental company was closed for the night. Same with the airport shuttle service. We could spend the night in a hotel – IF we could find one, within walking distance, with a vacancy – and find a way home in the morning. Or, we might be able to wake up the taxi driver and get a ride from him (I could just imagine the You-Woke-My-Ass-Up surcharge on THAT fare!)

We decided to have the van towed to our mechanic without us, and we called Uber to get home. When the Uber driver arrived, he thought we was picking up an in-town fare – not a destination 2 hours away! “Guess I’d better go get some gas and call my wife,” he said.

Finally, one tow, one Uber ride, one car repair, and $800 later, we had the most expensive day trip ever!

A Ray of Hope and a Reminder of How to be Grateful

Throughout this long, crazy ordeal, we tried hard to focus on the positive. Sometimes we tried really hard. 🙂  As we sat on the side of the road, trying to figure out what to do – the first time, haha – and walked around the car in the sloshy mud, my daughter pointed out a beautiful double rainbow. (Yes, that’s the actual picture I took.)

The rainbow reminded us that every cloud has a silver lining. There’s a rainbow after the storm. All we have to do is remember how to be grateful when those storms come. Check out tomorrow’s post to discover how we did it: How to be Grateful Through Storms of Life: Part 2.
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