The choice to cultivate gratitude when life isn't rainbows and butterflies

Gratitude is easy when you ace your term paper, meet your deadline and everyone in the house is healthy and happy. It's easy to be thankful when the sun is shining, and life is rainbows and butterflies. But what do you do when it isn't? What do you do when the gray clouds threaten, and the storm hits? Are you grateful for the rain and tell yourself we wouldn't be able to survive without it? Do you decide to splash in the puddles? Or hide under the covers?

Life's challenges are lessons in the silver lining of those gray clouds. How boring would life be if every day beamed bursting sunshine and beguiling blue skies? What strength of character would develop? One that believes life is good only when the sky is blue.

I learn my best lessons during the worst storms. It's during the storm when your muscles are straining; your brain is screaming, and all you want to do is stay under the covers when you need to dig deep and cultivate gratitude. Capture the gray cloud, sift through it and uncover the gratitude of the struggle to reach the silver lining. Be thankful for the fight. It's the struggle that made you who and what you are. Never giving up during the fierce storm, being thankful for the painful lessons and pushing through the darkness of the cloud to grab that silver lining makes life beautiful even when the cocoons yield moths instead of butterflies and the sky is a stingy, stubborn two-year-old refusing to share its beautiful brilliance.

Tell me when your struggle was the hardest. How did you stay grateful?