Gratitude, Manifesting and Overwhelm

Last night I led a ceremony celebrating the beginning of spring.  One of the things I did during the celebration was give out plastic eggs with a secret word in them--words like truth, clarity, joy, fun, abundance, etc. Then we did a meditation with our special word and helped it to flower and grow in our lives. When I opened my egg my word was gratitude.  I laughed and talked about how I have been receiving lessons in gratitude for many years and I guessed I was going to be doing some more work with gratitude and then went on to the meditation. The celebration went well and we all had a great time.

But when I got home and was alone with my thoughts I started not feeling so grateful to have gratitude as my special word.  I spend lots of time talking about how important gratitude is in generating the life you want to live.  I say my gratitude list every morning before I get out of bed, and I really am grateful for lots of things in my life.  But when I got gratitude for my word instead of something like fun, play, or laugher, I felt slighted by the universe.  In truth it felt like I was a student who had gotten a failing grade on a paper and was going to have to do it over again to improve my score.  I'm one of those students who only likes getting "A"s, so it didn't sit well.  

Another truth is that I have called all this great stuff to me that I wanted to do and have,  and over the last couple of months I have mostly been whining about all the stuff I have called to me.  Hmmm.  Well that gave me pause.  Was I just losing the spirit of gratitude?  I really do feel grateful for a lot of things in my life, and I do feel grateful for the things the universe is sending me.  So what could possibly be the problem?

When I dug deeper and hit the little button inside my heart that makes the tears come (always a good indicator of finding the sore spot) I realized that I was feeling resentful and whiny BECAUSE I was getting what I asked for, and I was having trouble managing all that wonderful new stuff.  A friend I was talking to on Skype this morning pegged it perfectly by calling it OVERWHELM.  Plus, by bringing these things into my reality I became responsible for them, and that is just a little bit scary.  It's like bringing home your first baby and then realizing you have to take care of it, feed it, change it's diapers, and watch over it for YEARS.  

But just like bringing home that first baby, after a while you settle in and realize you aren't going to kill it when you change a diaper and you will someday sleep again and it becomes okay. In fact it becomes more than okay because it is yours and you are falling in love.  Then feeling a little overwhelmed sometimes is worth it because you know you are doing something worthwhile and meaningful.  And in thinking about the things I have recently manifested in my life I really DO like them enough to give it more time for me to get settled in and know that I CAN do this.   

Once I came to that understanding things began to fall into place around my word, gratitude.  Receiving an egg with the word gratitude in it wasn't about me failing to be grateful or being bad at it somehow.  It was a reminder of the POWER of that word and the energy behind it.  Gratitude is a word of creation, and if I can use it to attract new things into my life I can also use it to manifest a little more ease and grace in becoming accustomed to the "new baby."  And with that realization the angst and fear have fallen away, at least for now, and I am feeling grateful for the word GRATITUDE in my life.

Many blessings to you all and HAPPY SPRING!