My Gratitude Journey

I remember when I started my Gratitude Journal.  It was 2011.

And I remember, too, that my daughter started her journal at the same time.

It's amazing to see the perspective of gratitude through the eyes of an 11-year-old.

And I remember those first few entries.  They seemed small and simple and meaningless:

• Skittles
• The Moon
• My Friends
• My Teachers

And then there was that one that stood out among the others:

• The way the sunlight shines on the gold door knob in my bedroom.

Perspective.

And I read it in a quote the other day... that made me pause long enough to remember back on this gratitude journey with fondness.

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."  - Henry David Thoreau

In my hunger for joy... in my thirst for the full life that I knew Jesus had died to provide me with... was the realization that it COULD be found... but only with this daily practice of gratitude.  Because if I couldn't be grateful for what God was providing NOW... no matter how small and seemingly insignificant... then true joy and peace in my life could not exist.

And some days are hard.  To find gratitude in sickness and disease and disappointment and failure.  This is hard.

It's the hard discipline.

But it's the hard discipline with the sweetest reward.

Because I don't want to merely survive this life... I want to LIVE in the abundant life.
I want to run the race marked out for me with passion.
I want to feel joy from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.
Real joy.  Pure joy.  Jesus joy.

And this daily discipline of gratitude reminds me of building a house made a stone on a concrete foundation.  Each stone placed represents an act of gratitude.  With each stone laid, I am practicing the art of being grateful.  Grateful for the small things, the large things, and everything in between.

And I practice laying the stones, a worshipful response to the gifts and blessings of God, so that I can find shelter when the storms of life hit.

And they will hit.

And I will wake one day to find gratitude nearly impossible.

The daily discipline of naming the gifts... counting the endless ways that God loves me by the blessings He has abundantly provided me... is indeed building a strong place for me to reside in when the gifts are hard to see.

And I look back on my gratitude journal... this journey that has become a daily practice.  A practical way to worship God in seeing with a whole new perspective.

Joy is here!  It's been here all along.  I just had to pay attention.

Perspective.

• Homemade bread
• Dark, raining, accomplished mornings
• Baptism Sunday
• A growling belly
• A smile from Chloe at the end of a school day
• White Christmas lights
• Spinning windmill
• Living second
• Memorizing scripture
• Reading a good book
• Snuggles
• Praying friends
• Lazy Sundays

Philippians 4:11-12 says:

"I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.  I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything.  I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little."

This was Paul.  And what is notably remarkable about this... Paul was in prison when he wrote these very words.

He might have known a little something about the "living on almost nothing", "empty" and "little" remarks made.  He was no stranger to pain and suffering, but because of his relationship with Jesus... because of the cross and because he had learned true joy in Christ... He was able to be content even when his circumstances seemed grim.

I want to live like that!

Lord - teach me this kind of joy and peace... so that I might have it for myself.

I will practice daily, this discipline of gratitude because it is the only way to living full!

Finding JOY in the JOurneY,