12/16/11 - Gratitude

At church recently we've been talking about gratitude, the importance of having a grateful heart, and how gratitude leads to joy. It is the foundation of all other virtues.  It has been a real good series and has challenged me to think about how I show my gratitude for all the many blessings I have.  To be honest, I am definitely aware of how fortunate our family is to have a home, our health, a great job, friends, family, etc.  Those are obvious, but there are so many things that occur throughout the day that in their own right are significant, but I don't do a good enough job of daily reminding myself that these (little) moments are themselves blessings.

One of the ways our pastor challenged us to focus on gratitude was to start a gratitude journal.  Keep a notebook by your bed and write a few sentences each night about what you are thankful for that day.  As I thought through this though, I immediately thought of a life long friend who I has done something really pretty cool this past year along this line of thinking.  Although instead of a journal, she has been tweeting and posting on Facebook a daily tweet/status update with what she is thankful for.  I am lucky enough to follow her on twitter and have been blessed myself by her efforts to document and share that which she is thankful for.

So, the combination of the influence of this series at church and the tweets of @soulmagnet75 have inspired me to take my own attitude of gratitude a little more serious.  I am throwing out an early new year's resolution - I resolve to be more grateful and show more gratitude.  I still need to figure out exactly how I am going to do the latter, but I also think this can be very important to model for the kids as well.  I figure I have a couple more weeks until the new year to figure out the details, but I really like the idea of a journal of some kind - although paper and pen is a little old fashion for my tastes.