**warning: this piece is sentimental. no food pics are involved .. hehe**
I know I’m a bit late on the what-I’m-thankful-for bandwagon but I think that’s okay. Being grateful should never be a trend and it’s never too late to stop and smell the roses. I rarely take a full moment to consider everything I’m grateful for. I don’t know why, it seems like the “right” thing to do .. right? It happens to all of us. I think it’s one of the greater unifying qualities of mankind: we are all a bit too busy to be grateful at times.
This reminds me a bit of when I was a child and I was told, in church, to wake each morning and present my gratitude to God. “It doesn’t matter what it is! Just say it! And you watch .. your life will double in blessings.” I was hooked. It sounded like the easiest way to get a better life, and according to the Sunday School Teacher I didn’t even really have to try that hard. So I came up with this list that I would go over every morning and night. I would recite it to God with the understanding that I’d get “bountiful blessings” in return.
“Thank you, Lord, for my mom, dad, brother, cat, dogs, chickens, horses, cows, my cousin Chris, my Aunt Kendra, my entire dad’s side, actually, my mom’s side, too, and my friends Lyndi, Kacey, and also Natalie (even though she bothers me .. especially because she bothers me) ..”
When I got older I adjusted this prayer a bit. I started to fill it in with my new friends, my boyfriends, and my grades in school. “Thank you Lord for my mom, dad, brother, cat, dogs, new cat, Chris, Braedyn (Chris’s new child, dutifully added), Heather, ….Kayla, Tara, Erik, and my A in AP Calculus ….” This list would go on, morphing into my current state, though never really changing. I would list everything I was grateful for, more out of duty and fear that my blessings would be stripped of me than because I was truly grateful. Of course I was grateful if you really got down to it, but mostly I was performing out of duty and promise than out of gratitude.
I eventually scratched that habit because I felt like the God that I believe in is not one that will shun you for not listing your “thanks” every morning and every night. Instead, I vowed to meditate, daily, on my blessings and to really absorb the things that made me whole.
The problem with that, though, is that I just sort of stopped doing that, too. How many of you have accidentally stopped your Gratitude Journals??
Well then, now is the time. I like to think of my own gratitude journals as being a sort of submission to a prayer field. This prayer field exists and is there when you come to it and will be available to Source, The Universe, God, Whomever, when needed. I’d like to make a purposeful submission to this prayer field and watch my blessings double, not because it is an expected exchange or return for doing so, but because when I am aware of how blessed I really am it is only bound to increase further .. like attracts like, right? If I’m acknowledging my blessings I’m bound to see more blessing in my life!
Today, I am grateful. Here are my top pieces of gratitude this morning:
It's always nice listing all of the things one is grateful for. ^^ I'm grateful that no matter where life takes me, I always end up where I'm supposed to be. ^__^
YES! you are always where you are meant to be. It's such a beautiful lesson .. thanks for sharing!
I've started to share with people how we really should be grateful for all the little things we tend to take for granted… every new day is a gift.
Yes! this is absolutely true