Gratitude, An Everyday Experience

Life changing events and diagnosis's, everyday routines, jobs lost, homes given up, relocations, and all the other difficult things; we experience. These all add up to fear, sadness, grief, hopelessness, confusion, worry,mundane,   conditions many of us spend part of our day walking around in.  It is so easy for us to get caught up in the what if’s, if that, I shoulda woulda coulda, if I had only.... you fill in the blank. 

This weight we carry everyday on our hearts, it feels heavy, our spirits wane, it is almost like we get sucked into a black hole and cannot see the light. We wish someone would read our mind, take over and help us see the truth.

This is exactly what happened to me with my son’s diagnosis of type 1 diabetes last year. Along with that diagnosis came the darkest time of the year; the daylight stepping aside to welcome the night; the dark season. Each day I searched for the sun which hid behind the tall pines, and those pines appeared to reach higher into the sky each day, withholding the sun from me. At the same time I experienced a dark night of the soul. 

During this time, I began to feel the need to express daily gifts from God to see all His graces.  I begin to jot theses gifts down everyday, sometimes one gratitude, sometimes more. Some days were easier than others. I am scratching down these gifts just as they happen, as they arrive, as they are unwrapped and in reflection at  days end.. These gifts from Him make my life grace; daily graces. I am seeing things I have never seen before, attuned and aware of this constant, endless stream of gifts. It is in these gifts that one  begins to feel more joy, less stress, better health, more connected in your relationships and more delight in your everyday life.

I found myself setting a goal of 250 gifts, then 500 and now it is ever flowing. I began daily, writing several or more, when times are the most turbulent inside I can be found jotting down ten gifts a day. Now I write these gifts three or more days a week, keeping a journal open and ready for all those unexpected graces easily overlooked, or for those fleeting thoughts that seems to vanish as quickly as they came..  counting gifts is addictive and becomes the happiest of habits that becomes a way of living gratitude, living grace! Giving thanks for these graces has changed my life.


Gratitude IS an Everyday Experience