Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Learning about Gratitude

This morning I enjoyed listening to a friend speak on gratitude. Often gratitude is something that I can let slip by in my regular day, I get too busy and focused on the things that don't matter rather than focusing on the things that do. I fill my day with nonsense and things that keep me busy, but I don't often fill my day with things that make me whole, things that bring me peace, and things that recenter me. It's easy to live a day without giving gratitude.

Years ago I titled my blog Glimpses of Beauty. I wanted to focus on seeing glimpses of God's beauty in my daily life. I realized that I see a lot of dark places and have been invited to be with others in some dark places, but even in that darkness, God's light shines and we can see beauty. The band Gunger wrote a song titled Beautiful Things. One lyric states, "You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of us." God has the ability to make beautiful things out of things that have difficulty seeing as beautiful. I'm grateful that God has chosen to redeem even the most dusty and dirty parts of our souls, and that even in the chaos of life, He shows us beauty.

Seeing beauty for me is like seeing gratitude. It's easy to turn our head or close our eyes when our lives feel like chaos, and it's difficult to practice seeing beauty and speaking gratitude.

Every now and then I feel like I get to hit the reset button, and start things over. So today, I'm resetting. I'm going to start small by looking for one thing to be grateful for each day. I will write down that gratitude and why I'm grateful for it. As a tangible reminder I'm attempting to wear my "gratitude bracelets." When I think of something I'm grateful for, I will move the bracelet to the other wrist, with the goal of moving all seven bracelets to the other wrist. I'm not sure how this will work, but it's a start. Every new journey begins with a first step, so this is mine.

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Chris, Lisa, and Malia

Chris, Lisa, and Malia
Malia's baptism
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