If you would take hold of joy the way you clasp trouble to your bosom, how happy you would be. Clasp appreciation close to you. Clasp regard for life and your life. Be glad for what you are and for what you are not. Be glad for what you have and what you have not. Allocate to yourself all that you can be glad for. Your life is your life. Do not begrudge it. Do not fault it.

You were handed a certain sequence of cards, so it seems. You may have picked them out of the deck. Whether you did or not, however they got handed to you, they are in your hands, and you are the one who plays them out.

In sickness or in health, life has been granted you.

I know you feel that life is often not fair. Some of your blessings may not be fair either. Value your blessings, and then you are playing fair with life.

For reasons known or unknown, your life is such and so. Someone would be grateful for what you, at present, may or may not be grateful for. In retrospect, you may be grateful for much that you were not grateful for at the time.

When you were nineteen, you might have found fault with your figure. Now you would be thrilled to have that same figure.

Once you may not have appreciated some people in your life, and now you wish they were here and that you could hug them and talk to them and tell them how much you love them.

Once, someone broke your heart, perhaps, and it was the end of the world for you. Now, in retrospect, you heave a deep sigh of relief that you did not go down the path that once you so wanted to go down.

You may favor one fruit over another, yet each fruit from God's tree nourishes you. Your preference is not everything. Digest what is before you. It may be hard for you to see, yet some good will come from it. You may well not know what good, yet good will come. You will come out ahead from it. You will survive. You will thrive.

What is there in life to be surprised at? If you must have woe, you must also have joy. Let woe be uncommon, and joy abundant.

You may not have conscious choice of all that visits you in life, yet you can choose the timbre of your life. You may have a scrawny little tree in your yard, and you can water it, and you can bless it, and it will bear fruit. Someone else may have an orchard and neglect it. One tree, or a thousand, trees are for you to nourish. Life is for you to nourish.

Whatever is given to you or taken away from you, you have say over how you treat life. You are a vital factor. You are the deciding factor of how you value your life. You do not need to stay stuck in one view of life. You are free to choose from many views. Do not let moaning about life become a habit. It is a hard habit to break. If you have adopted that habit, let it go now. It is easier to let go of it now than later.

If, at this moment, I were to adjure you to pray, I would ask you to pray that you lift up your life and offer it to Me with all the love in your heart and so make your offering of your life to Me and your responsibility for your life simple and holy.