Paying it Forward

For all who celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday, I hope you had a great day!  I know that I sure did!  I love getting together with family and I love eating yummy food.  All my gluten free recipes turned out really well, so that made me very happy!

I also had another amazing moment yesterday.  As most of you may know by now, my 7 year old is on the autism spectrum.  He has several different issues, including a major speech delay.  One thing he has never been good at is social interactions.  He isn't shy and will walk up to complete strangers and just sit down or act like he totally knows them.  But when it comes to appropriate social protocols, he doesn't do them. If someone tells him hello, he ignores them.  He rarely makes eye contact and will seem that he is ignoring people.  We work with him often, trying to get him to at least respond when someone greets him or says goodbye.  And at school, they work on these important social skills on a regular basis.

So, last night, after dinner, as we were all visiting and trying to overcome the food coma we were all in, John's aunt and uncle stopped by to visit.  Sam has met them a few times, but probably not enough to really know who they are.

As we're sitting there visiting, he walked up to Aunt Stephanie and held out his hand.  "Hello," he said, "my name is Sam".  He was making eye contact and everything.  Everyone in the room thought it was adorable, but for me, knowing what this little breakthrough means, wanted to cry and laugh and shout for joy-all at once!  I'm thankful for little steps that can be so big!

The prompt for today, is about paying it forward.  I love this concept, but find it harder to put into practice than to think about.  Most of this month, I have focused on prompts that make us think about all the areas in our life where we experience gratitude.  The rest of the prompts are things to make us think about doing something with the gratitude we feel.  I hope you will take a few minutes today to ponder the prompt and how it can affect your life.  I know I will!

The template for today is:

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Today's Prompt:  List  3 people, in my life, I can pay it forward to.