Grate­ful­ness requires you to step back from the  every­day mad­ness and eval­u­ate your­self.  Am I too self­ish to be grate­ful in a way that’s pleas­ing to my Cre­ator AND myself? Do I notice the bless­ings in my life or the neg­a­tive things/people/circumstances that are “out to get me”? When my fam­ily and friends look at me do they see gratefulness?

I bet not.

I’m not happy with my level of grate­ful­ness so why should my Heav­enly Father and fam­ily be pleased.

I have been read­ing Ann Voskamp’s One Thou­sand Gifts. Her blog is over­whelm­ing to my lit­tle shal­low self so I knew her book would put me on my keester. It’s tak­ing me for­ever to get through it because each page requires so much thought to soak it all in.

Her points are so…pointed. I think I’ve wrapped my head {and heart} around it, then my chil­dren and hus­band come home and put me to the test. I could do this so much eas­ier if I didn’t have to answer to them. But I sup­pose that defeats it all, doesn’t it?

I am grate­ful for those 3 bless­ings. I’m so blessed to have a hus­band that makes me laugh hys­ter­i­cally, which is my life­line. I’m blessed to spend so much time with Old­man before he turns com­pletely teenager-y on me and bored with me. I’m blessed by a Grem­lin who is a wise-ass like his mother and a lover like his father.

It’s that time of the year when I start to reflect on my bless­ings. This time last year, I wrote a note on Face­book where I talked about ver­bal­iz­ing those bless­ing. It’s like stak­ing your claim to what is truly yours.

Time to start speak­ing up again.

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