Being Grateful

Today my mind has been on gratefulness...there is so much crazy stuff in my life, my family's life, right now that it is easy to focus on the crazy and miss the blessings. I want to have a grateful spirit. Did you ever see that movie America's Sweethearts? John Cusak's character is focusing on being grateful. He is always closing his eyes saying "I'm grateful for you..."

 In one of the veggie tales there is a little song that says..."A grateful heart is a happy heart, I'm glad for what I have that's an easy place to start."

A grateful heart is a happy heart...so simple and so true. I have been learning over the past few months that gratefulness is a choice. I have many thing in my life to be grateful for...so many blessings, almost too numerous to count. I have to choose to focus on those things and make my heart grateful...

I choose to make my heart grateful...I choose to have a happy heart...I am glad for what I have and so that is where I will start. Here are some things that have made my gratefulness list over the past few weeks.

Let me start by saying I am very, very grateful for all the fairly obvious things...my family, the health of my children, my amazing friends, but I think the key for me is to find gratefulness in the crazy, random, everyday things. These are the things that have the potential to make me crazy...but if I can take a  minute I realize that I have the opportunity to be grateful for something wonderful...even if it doesn't seem that way at first glance.

Here is a good example...

I am very grateful for my washing machine even though it only washes on the delicate cycle. When we were out of the house for those months, so many things had to be replaced...I am so grateful that the washing machine still runs at all...

I am very grateful for my Target gift cards and not in the way you think...we had a housewarming this weekend and we were lucky enough to receive several Target gift cards. They are for stuff for the house...but today I needed to use them for medicine. Maggie has had this ongoing cough that we can't get rid of and I really needed some different medicine but it can be expensive and we don't have extra money for things like that...but before I could get stressed, I remembered my Target gift cards and I was able to get the things I needed for Maggie. Very Grateful!

I am extremely grateful for my car. It is a 2003 Dodge Durango and has about 80,000 miles on it. It is loud and obnoxious, but it is red and it seats seven and it is paid for and I LOVE it. We had some crazy stuff happen with our cars this summer and I am so very grateful that I have this wonderful car to drive. To most people it does not seem like much, but to me it is such an amazing gift!

I am so grateful to drop my kids off at school and pick them up everyday. The car pool lane is crazy and I hate to get up some mornings, but I really love being able to say "I Love you, have an awesome day! Do you best!" every morning. I love it so much that sometimes I get chocked up about it...I know it's crazy...but I want to be their biggest cheerleader. I want to hear the stories of the day when they get in the car in the afternoon. I am so grateful for this privilege at this time, it hasn't always been this way and I know it won't always be...so I am very grateful for the time now. 

That is not everything on my list by a long way, but you get the idea...so this is the challenge...everyday find something, anything you can be grateful for...yesterday I took the kids and the cousins to the park for about an hour. The weather was gorgeous and I loved hearing them laugh and scream and run and be silly...it did my heart good. I sat on the park bench filled with gratitude...

I know we are all going through stuff, me included. I don't pretend to know about your journey...but I do know that creator of ALL journeys...He doesn't make mistakes...He is good and He has a plan and He puts things in your life for you to enjoy...He wants you to have a grateful, happy heart...and if you think about it, you want that too...take a look around, enjoy the moment, you will be grateful that you did.