Now that October is over, I see many people on Facebook doing daily status updates on what they are thankful for, or a picture a day of what they are thankful for. You know, that’s really a good idea. If every one of us would use the season of Thanksgiving as an initiative to remember what we are thankful for…..not just at the dinner table at the end of the month looking at a yummy turkey, but every single day…….how much less complaining would we do about what we don’t have? What if we carried it over into the next month, and the next, and the next? What if every day we took the few seconds to take a picture of something we were truly thankful for and shared it?
I don’t know about everyone else, but I know my eyes would be opened. Even things that we complain about we might truly be thankful for. For example, we complain that our teenagers don’t listen to us or clean their room. What if instead of spending all the time complaining to ourselves “Their room is a mess, why can’t they clean up after themselves, why are they so lazy” and feeding negative thoughts about our children into our minds, why don’t we say “I am thankful we have the income to provide for their clothing, I am thankful I have a child with no health issues, I am thankful they have an active life, I am thankful they have friends to spend time with, I am thankful they are continuing school”. What if for every complaint we said, we had to immediately follow-up with two positive thoughts? What if every time we said or thought something negative about someone we had to immediately state two things about that person that were positive? I’m not talking about simple things like “she has pretty eyes” but something unique to them, something sincere, something that provokes thought in us?
How much more grateful would we be? How many smiles on our face would we add? How many headaches would leave? How much heartburn would leave? How much better our lives and the lives of those we come in contact with would be, if we would take just a few seconds every day to say “Lord, thank You for…”?
Thy eternal student 