Focusing the mind on the beautiful things

New Year is an excellent opportunity to send emails with good wishes to kind people that meant something to me in the past, and with whom I lost contact (very often the reason was my infertility, I could not handle being around when all their cute babies were born). 

One of the friends wrote back, writing something nice, I wrote back and we arranged a coffee date for Friday evening.   

This friend is actually my longest friend. We were school friends already in the first grade, when 7 years old. 

I remember meeting her for the first time few years ago, after the darkest years of my infertility. 
She visited me in my home and I was telling her all the sad things regarding my infertility. When she listened to me, she started to cry. And she asked me for tissues.

Then she started to tell me about her life. She was blessed with two beautiful healthy children (then 1 and 2 years old). But then she was recently diagnosed with MS and she was telling me about the disease. Then it was my turn to start crying. I borrowed the tissues from her.

It felt good, crying together.  

This was 5 years ago.

When we were arranging a coffee this time, she asked me if I could come to her apartment to get her, since she has problems walking alone.  Sadly, she has a fast version of MS, she really walks with difficulty, we needed 15 minutes for walking 250 meters from parking to the coffee bar. 

It felt good talking to her. Her disease really made her much wiser as usually people in our age are. 
She was explaining how horrible disease it is. That it occupies her mind all the time. That it is so horrible that she even dreams about it at night. In order to survive she needed to train her thoughts to focus on the beautiful things that she does have in her life. 

I loved this wisdom, about focusing the mind on the beautiful things. 
(this wisdom helped me to survive infertility).