Gratitude Journals

The oddest thing is you never really count your blessings until you are in trouble...just like the temptation to only take your antibiotics until you feel good rather than the full ten days it takes to truly wipe out the infection. There is even a book out now called The Science of Gratitude which I suppose, demonstrates changes in brain chemistry that happens when you have a grateful attitude and affects the way you handle things that in turn makes things turn out better. It all gets terribly complicated but also seems to me that science is continually affirming God’s laws. Give Thanks in All Things, for instance.

So, at Thanksgiving I thought our family should share a sense of gratitude for lessons learned this year and the amazing amount of blessings we have. It went down with the usual...well, our family finds the movie A Christmas Story absolutely hilarious. Life is such an absurd mix of the bizarre. What happened to It’s a Wonderful Life? We don’t live Father Knows Best...not quite The Simpson’s, thank heaven. Actually I’ve never seen them, believe it or now. My children say I would not like it ...I’m even uncomfortable with Spongepants Bob or whoever. But I can’t say we could write our story as the sweet all American family. Nevertheless...

So, what I did was to take a basket of notebooks.....mind you, I love notebooks so I could easily fill a basket with my leftovers, some new, some rejects, some with pages torn out and titles blacked out. I mean, this was not a fully thought out, Martha Stewart planned event. Not that a woman who once did not even put up a Christmas Tree (thereafter referred to as The Christmas We Had To Put the Presents on the Couch) would go to any Martha Stewart lengths. ...I took a basket of notebooks and informed the family that we should start a daily listing of things we were grateful for and share them at Christmas.

First, the jokes came about the notebooks.....old, pages torn out, rejects.....then black humor about what they would really be grateful for (and I won’t go there)....then how about if they just e-mailed Mom and she could keep the books.

Finally they left with their books and an idea of Christmas based on gratitude, the decision of a small Christmas gift exchange among us so the focus is on Christ, and underneath all the horseplay and wordplay, a grateful attitude about who we are and what we are. Happy about the way we’ve handled the year, grateful for the prayers from friends and family all around the world and knowing that their love and support will be there next year also.