{"id":317,"date":"2012-07-29T21:25:01","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T03:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=317"},"modified":"2012-10-30T08:58:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T14:58:08","slug":"it-could-always-be-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/it-could-always-be-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It Could Always Be Worse&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u201cIT COULD ALWAYS BE WORSE\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Okay so you are probably wondering what kind of depressing title that is for today\u2019s tweet, but before you think that let me tell you the backstory of it so you can understand that this phrase has become a powerful reminder in my life that has helped me to put things in my life into perspective each day, and how I think it could do the same for all of you\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As many of you know I have a little brother who is serving in the Air Force in Afghanistan. He is a Doctor. His wife Katie lives in Idaho but because she has two small boys and is pregnant with her next baby she has been staying at my house so we can help her out with my brother gone. Katie is one of the most positive people I have ever met. She is always in a good mood. She is always happy. She always has a kind word to share with anyone at any time. I rarely, if ever, hear her complain. Without going into to many details I will tell you that Katie has been through many trials in her life. When she and my brother got married and decided to start a family she got pregnant and then had a miscarriage. Then she got pregnant again and she went to full term with a darling baby girl that she delivered stillborn. Going to the funeral for her little girl was one of the most heartbreaking things to experience. Katie then got pregnant again and once again she had a miscarriage. I couldn\u2019t believe that after all of this that she simply didn\u2019t just give up and say enough. Many would have given up far before she did, but not Katie. She stayed positive and they tried again and this time they were blessed with a healthy baby boy. She went on to have yet another miscarriage and then another healthy boy. Now she is almost to term with another little boy that will be born while my brother is still in Afghanistan. When she heard my brother was being deployed and she realized that he wouldn\u2019t be around for her pregnancy and the birth she didn\u2019t once complain or gripe about it. She once again kept her positive attitude and stayed cheerful and pushed forward. I honestly have wondered how she does it? How does she stay positive no matter what trials come into her life? How does she stay so cheerful? And then one day I finally figured it out: Katie and I were working in our garage and something broke. I was complaining about it and Katie simply smiled and said \u201cIt could always be worse.\u201d She didn\u2019t say it in a mean way or a way to put me down for my being discouraged about it. She said it in her cute little happy tone that interjects joy into the world around her. She was simply reminding me that while what had broken was unfortunate, things could certainly be worse. All at once it hit me. Here is a mom who knows the pain of burying her beautiful little girl \u2013 yes, Katie was painfully aware that it could always be worse, and suddenly I was humbled beyond belief and I felt silly for having been so caught up in my whining about something that in the big scheme of things wasn\u2019t really a big deal at all.<\/p>\n<p>Katie has had to remind me many times during her visit with me that \u201cIt could always be worse\u201d and each time she kind little reminder snaps me back into the reality that life should be kept in perspective. Complaints should be kept in perspective. Our appreciation for all that is good in our world should be viewed with that perspective. Because the truth is that it really can always be worse, even when it may seem at its darkest points\u2026it could still get much worse. And so we cannot take anything for granted. We need to be grateful for everything in our life that is a blessing and all of us have many.<\/p>\n<p>Tonight Katie shared with me the photo of her friend\u2019s husband who is also serving in Afghanistan. Just recently he stepped on an IED pressure plate and it blew his feet off and the bottom part of his legs. As Katie showed me the photo she reminded me\u2026\u201dsee, it can always be worse\u201d\u2026and so it can.<\/p>\n<p>How lucky am I to have someone like Katie in my life to remind me of the beauty in the world around us and the blessings that we have to be grateful for. We all need friends like Katie in our lives. This week\u2019s challenge is to remember that \u201cIt could always be worse\u201d so let\u2019s be grateful for all that is good in our lives.<\/p>\n<p>One last note- I finally have a twitter account set up so that I can post a link to my daily blogs in a twitter feed with the link to the public blog. Now that the twitter account is live I will work this week to get the blog set up on a public site so you can all access the blog from home &#8211; my username is @amyreesanderson so if you search that on twitter you can link to me.<\/p>\n<p>Have a great day everyone! BE GRATEFUL FOR ALL THE BLESSINGS IN YOUR LIFE!<\/p>\n<p>~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIT COULD ALWAYS BE WORSE\u201d Okay so you are probably wondering what kind of depressing title that is for today\u2019s tweet, but before you think that let me tell you the backstory of it so you can understand that this phrase has become a powerful reminder in my life that has helped me to put [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[168,51,189,180,153],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adversity","tag-family","tag-friends","tag-happy","tag-positive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1724,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/1724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}