Today I am thankful for 30 days of thankfulness.

11.30.19

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Day 30. I made it. 30 stories. 30 days of sitting down to write. 30 days of finding a blessing in each day. 30 days of sharing.

I’m thankful for the perseverance to complete this self-proclaimed challenge.

I’m thankful for the daily accountability to look for a blessing in each day. I mean, I don’t suppose any of you would’ve publicly berated me or cut me out of your lives if I’d stopped after a few days, but sharing my daily dose of gratitude with y'all did provide me a sense of self-imposed accountability.

I’m thankful for the new habit I’ve formed. As I wrote my gratitude story each day in November, I also stopped to thank God for the blessings He’s given me each day. I’ve always kind of thanked Him willy-nilly in the past (like here and there and when I felt like it), but never quite so specifically or intentionally. Some of His blessings this month were big and obvious. Some were small and hidden. Some surely passed me by. Some days it was difficult to put my gratitude into words, but it was never difficult to find something to be grateful for – even on not-so-great days. It just required the conscious decision to look and then the conscious decision to say thank you.

I’ve been much more in tune this past month to the little moments in my day that God hand-picked just for me. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, so I’m hoping that after 30 days this one will stick. No, I’m not going to continue to document them on Facebook, but I am going to continue to stop and reflect, on a daily basis, and thank God for the blessings He’s given me.

I’ll be honest, I tend to spend a lot of my prayer time asking God for things, asking for healing for loved ones, asking for purpose or direction or courage, asking for guidance, asking for problems to be resolved, etc. But, I read something recently that really struck me, and honestly, it made me stop in my tracks. Basically it said that when we pray, we tend to be awfully concerned with how God hears our intentions. We want to shout them or repeat them again and again or pray them just perfectly – just to be sure we are heard in the way we want to be heard and so we know that God really understands what we need. It went on, though, to suggest that instead, we become equally or more concerned about God hearing our prayers of praise and thanksgiving, and we focus on Him hearing our gratitude just as loudly and clearly. Now I know that God doesn’t have a hearing problem. He knows my heart inside and out. So the change in my prayer isn’t for His benefit. It’s for mine – to lighten my heart and help me focus on the blessings before the problems. I’m still working on this balance, but I’m certainly trying.