thankful thursday

I know it is Friday, so it must seem a bit weird that my title is "Thankful Thursday." Here's the deal...Monday morning I was reading President Monson's talk from the last General Conference titled, "Finding Joy in the Journey" and these two quotes really got me thinking:

"Both abundance and lack of abundance exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend...when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that is present - love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us happiness - the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth."
(the footnotes said this quote was by a "personal correspondence")

"Whatever hour God has blessed you with, take it with grateful hand nor postpone your joys from year to year, to that in whatever place you have been, you may say that you have lived happily." -Horace, Ancient Roman Philosopher

After reading those quotes, along with the inspired words of our sweet Prophet, I realized I needed to be more "grateful for the abundance that is present" in my life. So on Monday I decided that in an effort to try to better recognize that abundance in my life, I am going to make every Thursday "Thankful Thursday". Yesterday was unfortunately a busy day (work...the dentist {grrrr}...home teaching...and a movie with a friend) so I wasn't able to get my first "Thankful Thursday" post done. So, having a few extra minutes today, I figured it was better late than never!

So as I have pondered over the past week, I realized I started off my week (on Sunday night, in fact) feeling extremely grateful for this great friend...

Miss Tiffany.

Tiff and I officially met each other almost a year ago exactly....she came into my life in a funny, funny way...a situation I never imagined would turn out to be so perfect and fantastic :). Over the past year she has become one of my very dearest friends and we've had a whole lot of fun together.

Anyways, the reason I was feeling so grateful for this girl this week is because I called her (in a bit of panic, I might add) on Sunday night at 10:45 pm. She was already in bed...and already asleep. But being the great friend that she is, she answered the phone anyways. When I realized I had woken her up, I felt so bad and told her I was so sorry. She said to me, "Cin, don't be sorry. If I didn't want to talk to you, I wouldn't have answered." See? She is a rockin' good friend. But, it gets better...we preceeded to talk and we talked until a little past midnight! It wasn't until near the end of our conversation that she told me she had to be to work early on Monday morning. The girl was probably hoping to get a good start to her week, but instead she just listened to me and chatted with me and took the panic RIGHT out of me. I woke up on Monday morning and honestly, my first thought was how grateful I am for Tiff.