Gratitude Challenges

I've been thinking lately about gratitude. Mostly because it seems the Lord keeps bringing it before me. Repeatedly. He's good at things like that.

Several years ago, Ann Voskamp made a choice that would change her life. She chose to focus on gratitude, and began her list of One Thousand Gifts. In the years since, it's become the endless list, because she didn't stop at one thousand.

In this post, Sarah challenges us to give thanks when it's inconvenient, for the hard things. A clip: And I should be grateful that He thinks enough of me to carefully craft difficulty to edge me toward beauty, kindness, and grace with pressure. I don’t want to just be thankful for the easy. I want to be grateful for the hard. And that involves a choice...one I'm making today.

I'm going to make the choice. I'm not sure yet what form my list will take, but I'm going to become more deliberate in choosing to be thankful. At least some of my list will be shared here, but I don't yet know how much. We shall see...

For starters, I give thanks for:

1) The pain God uses to draw me to Himself, to teach and mold me. I do not understand why the answer to my prayers cannot yet be "Yes," but I thank Him in the pain, for I know that He is good.

2) His love endures forever

3) that two year old little man, perched on his stool in the kitchen, patting out biscuit dough and cutting biscuits with me

4) the hard work my man puts in to support our family

5) parents who are two of my best friends

6) naps to the sound of rain outside my window

7) midwives

8) the myriad of colors in our sweet gum trees this fall

9) the comfort of my husband's touch in the night

10) pie pumpkins lining my hearth