This year I won’t be around for Canadian Thanksgiving, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking a lot about gratitude. This past year has been full of change and a lot of great experiences, & it’s really brought me to a place of being thankful. I touched on it last week on my blog how I always take a minute at a concert & just take everything in & afterward I’m always overwhelmed by how blessed I am. I’m not a super optimistic person by nature, I tend to look more on the dark side of things, I like to make excuses & call myself a realist, but in reality, I tend to focus on the wrong things. There’s been a number of messages over the past few months that have talked about how you handle storms, or how what you focus on can change your perspective. When I choose to focus on the positive things in my life & how truly blessed I am I feel much more content with my life. When I put my phone down, live in the moment & take a second to just thank God for the life I live & all the little things I have, I become quite overwhelmed. We tend to get so caught up with our first world problems that we forget how someone else in a different part of the world would be SO grateful to deal with what we end up complaining about. We get mad if our coffee isn’t hot enough, or we wait in line too long, guys the fact that we can walk out the door & pay for someone else to make our coffee for us is a privilege. If we start living from a place of true gratitude really being thankful for everything even something as simple as having a bed to sleep in we will feel a lot more content. I’ve been challenging myself over the last little bit that when I start to feel negative or want to complain I try & counteract it with something I’m thankful for. Let’s say work is driving me crazy, I’ll think about how thankful I am that I have a job to go to every day or the money I get that enables me to go to a fun event. When you start to shift your focus & live from a place of gratitude your perspective truly begins to change. So this weekend when you’re sitting around eating your turkey dinner & you’re thinking about being thankful, remind yourself that it shouldn’t be just a once in a while thing, but a lifestyle.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever.
1 Chronicles 16:34
give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:18
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows
James 1:17
Love,
She Laughs Mission 