The {real} to-do list

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

We had a happy November didn't we. Or did gratitude work-arounds if it was hard. I look forward to keeping-on-celebrating in December! Love you! :)

Awe-some

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Such a heart

ThanksLIVING: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Thanksgiving

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food,
For love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

A Grateful Heart

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.

--George Herbert

The Turkey Day scrapbook page... and a quote

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.” 

“Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.” ― Thomas Merton

Enough and more

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” ~Melody Beattie

Positivity!

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

I love declarations like this one from blogger Tina Swithin where she starts out

"I believe there is always something to be thankful for!"

"Operate from a place of gratitude, positivity and selflessness. I look at each experience in life as a chance to learn and grow as a person. I am known for taking a day-old batch of lemons and making a pitcher of lemonade to share with everyone around me!

I am happiest when I step outside of my own world and put someone else first. Our world has become very “me” focused. It takes a conscious effort to break the cycle and to step outside of one’s comfort zone. I encourage you to offer a smile to a stranger or a hug to a friend, a compliment to someone who looks discouraged, or purchase a bag of groceries for a single mom. Each one of us has different strengths and different resources available—no matter where you are in life, you have the ability to extend a hand and help someone, whether it is with money or simple kindness.

My advice is to live and practice gratitude daily, see the positives in each experience and reach beyond your own world to make a difference in the life of another person through love and kindness."

There is always, always, always...

...something to be grateful for!

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Make gratitude a practice

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

• 
  

PRESCRIPTION FOR GRATITUDE

• Lissa Rankin, Care2 Make a Difference

Perhaps the single most potent factor affecting how happy you are – and the one most easy to change – is how much you make gratitude a practice. If you wait until Thanksgiving every year to express gratitude, you’re missing 364 other healing opportunities.

I took a workshop for physicians with Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen who taught us to take time at the end of every day to answer three questions in a journal. It’s been four years, so I may butcher the exact questions, but my memory of them is this:

1. What surprised me today?
2. What am I grateful for today?
3. What touched my heart today?

Rachel swears that these three questions will change your life, and in my own practice I found that to be true.

-----
(From Nat) I love the words of Rachel Naomi Remen, a cancer physician and master storyteller, whose two books "Kitchen Table Wisdom" and "My Grandfather's Blessings" I read, oh, maybe fifteen years ago. And do still own. Seeing her name in this article's piqued my curiosity again in her wonderful positive nature, healing hands and healing attitudes. Gratitude being at the core, the very center of her own wellness.

Ah, and here's a clever way to "chart" your practice of gratitude this week. Fill this out just before Thanksgiving Day, or cut into strips and create a Blessings Jar with them... every day this week before the big day pulling one out to answer. Affix the label above to the jar and have fun!

Live by them

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

~November 22, 1963: Death of the President. Shortly after noon President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas.

~November 22, 2013: 50th Anniversary

Thank God

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

For every creation of God is good, and nothing to be refused, it if be received with thanksgiving. 1 Timothy 4:4

Thanksgiving is on its way.

Thanksliving is every day.

Thanksgiving a Time to Find Gratitude Amid Difficulty

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints NEWSROOM, 20 NOVEMBER 2012 — POSTED by MARIN DECKER

One year ago today this article (below) was posted by the LDS Church Newsroom, and the year since has not gotten easier.

Not nationally and not, for me, personally.

This quote by Prophet and Church President Thomas S. Monson was included and is true still, giving me hope and courage while I "figure out" how to live a thankful life:

“While there is much that is wrong in the world today, there are many things that are right and good. ... Our lives are blessed in countless ways. ...

“… [The] things which provide deep and lasting happiness and gratitude are the things which money cannot buy: our families, the gospel, good friends, our health, our abilities, the love we receive from those around us. Unfortunately, these are some of the things we allow ourselves to take for granted. …

“When we encounter challenges and problems in our lives, it is often difficult for us to focus on our blessings. However, if we reach deep enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel and recognize just how much we have been given.”

-----

Many across the nation and world, including members of the Church, currently face weighty challenges in their lives. In difficult periods of the past, leaders have recognized the collective need to give thanks amid turmoil and to turn to God.

Following the Revolutionary War and ratification of the United States Constitution, President George Washington issued a proclamation designating Thursday, 26 November 1789, as an official holiday of “sincere and humble thanks” for God’s “care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation.” In October 1863, in the midst of a bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln made the traditional Thanksgiving celebration a nationwide holiday to be commemorated each year on the fourth Thursday of November. [See "Nevertheless remembered mercy," yesterday's post.]

Lincoln’s proclamation enumerated the blessings of the country, then urged that those blessings “be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.” He recommended that Americans “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation.”

As Presidents Washington and Lincoln expressed, reflecting on our blessings when times are trying can help change our perspective on life’s challenges.

We hope that all people will see this Thanksgiving holiday as a time to express gratitude and to serve those around them.

Nevertheless remembered mercy

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg address by President Abraham Lincoln. While the news lauds that proclamation today, I present this other one six or seven weeks earlier by the President. 

Lincoln actually proclaimed two Thanksgiving days in 1863, the first after the victory at Gettysburg, and a second for November following the New England custom of an autumnal Thanksgiving "for the generals" (for all of the blessings of Providence during the preceding year). 

The second Thanksgiving is the first in the series of national Thanksgivings we celebrate today.

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to invite and provoke the aggression of foreign states, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict, while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. The needful diversion of wealth and strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense has not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship. The axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect a continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be reverently, solemnly, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and voice, by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea, and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.

(signed) Abraham Lincoln.

-----

Abraham Lincoln "believed - and he instinctively believed every American could be inspired to realize - that calling upon God in complete humility could possibly work miracles of revival and transformation, both for themselves and their country.

What greater humility exists than expressing gratitude to God?" (Rev. Scott Ufford)

Grace-full state

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass came up with “un-birthday,” any event that can be celebrated on any day that is not your birthday!

A very merry un-birthday
To me
To who?
To me
Oh, you!

A very merry un-birthday
To you
Who, me?
To you

Oh, me...

(Remember the Mad Hatter and March Hare drinking and singing in Disney's Alice in Wonderland? Golly gee whiz.)

No kidding, I'm having a great November so far counting my blessings. Every day. I'm inspired as I gather my thoughts to post here about living a thankful life. Nah, I don't need the major hype around Thanksgiving Day to make me merry, nor the trappings of the Day itself: I'm quite liking each un-holiday this month - my regular life. Opting in on a grace-full mind and heart and finding something to celebrate every day.

Change of paradigms

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Remember I posted about these two (link) several months ago? (And here's a post about just Sandra herself, go there (link), she's so wonderful, and anyway today's her birthday! Happy Birthday, Sandra!!!) Yup, then they were just receiving their call to the Scotland/Ireland Mission as member and leader support missionaries and, well, they've been out since August 5th (with a stint back home as Brent's mother passed away early in September). I love getting Sandra's letters. A story and additional paragraph from her latest puts me in mind of all I have to live thankful for, every day, in every way.

She says... I’m quickly running out of time before we layer up and head for Thurso for a day of crofting but I want to tell you about the “miracle of the pheasant stew.” In crofting country, life is lived by a very different paradigm than what we’re used to. It’s very important when we work with the Latter-day Saints up north that we don’t take too many of our assumptions and presuppositions into the equation.

So, Bonnie and Bart names changed (a young crofting couple that we spend time with) were having the three Thurso elders over to dinner to thank them for some work they did mucking out their barn. Apparently they do this regularly. Bonnie has some real anxiety about fixing and serving food to company but she naturally wants to show her appreciation, so there it is. Anyway, they were in a particularly tight financial spot that week (car needed tires, etc.) and they didn't have money to buy food for this dinner. They were driving in their car and praying for some way to obtain food (actually some kind of meat) for dinner to serve the elders when

all of a sudden a pheasant flew in front of their car and they hit it... BAM! The blow killed it instantly and they jumped out of the car, scooped it off the road and took it home to scald it, pluck it, and make it into a stew!

Yup... you got it... road kill stew.

Anyway, the Elders didn't know the story behind the stew. They only knew that with every mouthful, they had to pick little pieces of pheasant bone from between their teeth and keep on smiling. I guess it tasted pretty good but it was difficult to eat.

They were complaining amongst themselves on their way home about what they had been served and feeling a little hard done by. The next day (Fast Sunday) in testimony meeting, Bart's father got up and was recounting the story of how this pheasant had been acquired and how it had been an answer to their prayers. The Elders were telling us how ashamed they had felt about their complaining and how they realized how much thought, effort and faith had gone into this meal!

Here in the Highlands we seldom go into a home where there’s enough seating for everyone (especially if we’re with the Elders), there’s often very little heat, many homes don’t have hot water except for the electric box that heats the shower water and some don’t even have refrigerators or stoves (that’s more the exception). I’m starting to realize where the custom of dishing up people’s plates for them originated. First of all, there often just isn't room for everyone to help themselves as the food is originating from a very tiny space and, second, the hostess needs to be sure there’s enough to go around. Actually, here, we normally get served portions that are HUGE and it’s hard to say to your hostess that you simply can’t eat it all. They generally reply that anything that’s left will be happily eaten by their (huge) dog/dogs!

My paradigms are shifting on a daily basis.

I must get to packing my bag for Thurso and our day with the Allens. It’s turned very cold here and I’m sure that it’s frigid in the Allen's croft. I’ll be packing lots of socks, long underwear, my warmest outer clothing, a toque, my new snowboarding type gloves, etc., for sitting in their home. Big change of paradigm. I love the Allens and truly look forward to my time with them.

The croft.  The "barn" is in the foreground, house in the back.

Receiving

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

I think we're on earth to learn to receive. I mean that; I've been thinking a lot about it. Receive, in fact, all that the Father has - not just a reward in our afterlife, but here and now.

Here's the way I mean it: I pray for blessings. I pray for them. I have the idea of what I want, I visualize it, then often I look around and see I have it, so I thank God again and again for these things. They please me. He wants me to be happy! But when I live in gratitude for all my circumstances (the ones I love and expect... yes... and even ones that shock me and which I resist and complain about and try to retreat from), I am best in receive mode. "Postured" if you will to accept all of life that Father wants me to experience, so... all the parts of my my life as it is occurring now.

As it is occurring now, my life circumstances - all that Father is sending and letting happen to me - is with expertness teaching me all I need. Your life is likely surrounding you with all you need at the moment too.

Receive mode is to set aside my preoccupations and opinions and best ideas and observe what's Right in Front of Me. Yesterday I posted about focus and think that to receive in fact I must readily shift my focus from myself to another (yes please). Live thankful for my "now" circumstances, willing to have my paradigms shifted (about which I will post tomorrow).

If all that the Father has is gifts, tender mercies, trials, waiting, the mundane and routine, the sublime, knowledge, understanding (clarity), euphoria (charity), limitations, forgiveness, listening, comforts, safety, possibility inside relationships, possibility to become like His Son and Him... if all that He has is this and more, then I say,

"Thank thee, Father, for all that Thou givest.

Help me to receive with grace all that.

Help me to receive it fully.



Help me to be continually grateful.

Help me to extend it to others.

Always."
-----

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired. 
Martin Luther

Celebrate

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

I like this quote by cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg... "I celebrate life each day through the lens of gratitude."

I love taking pictures, then standing back and oohing and aahing over the thing and the picture of the thing. I love suspending something in time and feeling the feelings of then, now. Can't I just wear a big dumb happy look on my face over the most ordinary thing if it's in the right light... or stage of growth; coming or going... or standing still. If it's new to me, or as familiar as breathing! Letting my breath in and out is familiar and essential and it's how my feelings come and go over a snapshot often.

Celebrate? You bet! Through the camera lens and, as I've been posting about all month, with gratitude for all that shows up in it.

I'm learning about certain focus too through the two funky mirrors dad placed right on his side mirrors (yes) of the Pilot. Circles... perhaps what you'd call "fish eye" lenses," I dunno... adhered on the glass of the side mirrors that've been bugging me whenever I drive his car. For years - because he's lent me the Pilot when I've vacationed here - and lately, as once in a while I get in it for errands or whatever when Kent's out of town in the other car.

I put the car in gear to back out of the garage yesterday and my eyes did the thing they always do: looked into the sweet spot in my side mirrors and (as my eyes always do in the Pilot) found these lenses in the way. Dadgummit! My eyes could not, cannot, instantly "find" those convex mirrors as the first spot to look. Don't these give the driver a far broader, deeper, wider view around the car?! Exactly why dad installed them. Bye bye blind spot.

I'm not used to them.

They're absolutely in the way (right?) of where I normally look. I duck and dodge my head finding the view I want around them until, sighing, I "remember" to focus - that's the right term, focus - into the circles and, voilà! Perception! Clarity! Space around me! I back the car purposefully looking right into these. All clear. Or not: the lenses show me everything I need.

The camera and the Pilot (ha!) literally have lenses, viewfinders, that give me the world! Suspending an image or a moment or an event and feelings that go with it; and distinguishing (when I rightly focus) what's around me as I'm in motion. Life has a particular viewfinder too, the very lens of gratitude. Drawing my eye there, "finding" it, "remembering" it, focusing through it stills life a bit; stills me and I draw on God and heaven for happiness. And gives me broader, deeper, wider perspective while I'm in motion and moving right along.

We celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday soon and we may celebrate every day by living a thankful life.

Salve = “save” with an added “l” for love

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

I walked just over a dozen miles with Laura yesterday - to the temple and back. Her hip hurt when we were done, and one of my toes has blister on it. Yuck.

I took out a BandAid and the tube of Neosporin, poked a hole in the blister with the tip of an alcohol-swiped straight pin, and put on the salve. (And put on the BandAid.) (And put on my Birkinstock.) I love the notion that my toe is now healing.

Salve is ointment for healing. Do you love that it's spelled save, with an "l" for love! You know where I'm going with this. You know I love words, and word play... can't help it, blame my parents, they made me this way! I do love how salve soothes the hurt in me.

My toe's feelin' it. I'm writing this post actually just hours after I walked, to be posted tomorrow... and now I'm tired. Sagging from doing a lot since I got home, like a pinhole was put in my energy, yeah, and not just the blister. I'm tired... and grateful. Gratitude for my body and the joy of walking, especially with a sister; for endorphins that've only just waned in my brain but've been with me most of the day; for clear thought and deliberate motion as I've worked... gratitude is the salve I'm offering my self just now. Gratitude to God.

The Savior offers salve, the balm of healing, symbolized in song and poetry as the Balm of Gilead, a very real ointment made from the gum of a tree and in ancient times a trade commodity.

There is a Balm in Gilead,
To make the wounded whole,
There is a Balm in Gilead,
To heal the sin sick soul.
(Recreational Songs, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1949, p. 130)

The Savior's love, forgiveness, invitation, redemption and Atonement all heal sin-sickness. How little is the "balm" I placed on my foot earlier, even the flow of gratitude as I write that supports my sagging energy, compared to the mighty relief that may come from Him. When I struggle; when I'm set back; when I sin.

Many (lately because of the typhoon in the Philippines) suffer misfortune and injustice. Consider the desperate! Too many though of God's children suffer with bitterness and resentment, having no peace. This must be unnecessary in the eyes of Christ who looks upon us with pity, mercy, charity and love that is constant; this is just what I think. And I think I let myself get wound up too, suffer when I don't need to. Struggle with worry, grief or disappointment, guilt or shame.

When your soul was full of sorrow,
Balm of Gilead did you borrow
At the gates of day?
(“Did You Think to Pray?” Hymns, 1985, no. 140).

There are remedies in life. Love is the major one... the Balm of Gilead is love; yea, even Jesus Christ Himself. Salve does equal "save" with an "l" for love! It so soothes the hurt in us and makes us better, does remind me, of that particular Balm. Oh, that I would reach for it as readily.

Always, a tube of ointment pulled out for one of my little owies will remind me.

I'm thankful for Jesus Christ.

God bless us every one

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Like There's No Tomorrow

I've been so taken by images of the disaster in the Philippines and the heroics of all kinds of people in the aftermath this week.

Two brothers wheel their grandmother in a shopping cart to the evacuation area of an airport following the massive destruction left by Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban, central Philippines, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2013. Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms on record, slammed into six central Philippine islands on Friday leaving a wide swath of destruction and thousands of people dead. (Wally Santana, Associated Press)

The situation over there is a mess... I'm heartsick. But surely there are miracles... God is over all.

We not a one of us have tomorrow promised to us. That's the impression I'm getting looking over dozens of photographs of Tacloban online. We must live and love - and be thankful (mustn't we?) - like there's really no tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a gift. And for even that (when I open my eyes on a new day) I'm grateful.

God bless us every one.

Be moved

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

I'm borrowing part of a post today, as I do frequently. The writer makes a point. Kate Conner (link) suggests we “be moved.” Says our being “touched” is not the highest purpose of gratitude: the higher purpose is to be moved. When we're able to say with great contentment (for we are so grateful), “clearly I lack nothing...” the human tendency is then to park it there; but progression must continue. The more we allow gratitude, awe and contentment to fill our hearts, the quicker we may come to the next inevitable step:

Conviction.

“How can I sit, resting in my blessings, lacking nothing, when so many – the majority of humankind, in fact – lack so much?” So it is impossible for anyone to experience conviction for very long before they are moved to action. “I cannot sit idly by. I will take what I have, whether little or much, and give where the need is great.”

Being thankful is but the teeniest, tiniest first step to living thankful. A crucial step but, truly, just the fringes.

The inevitable end of gratitude is a life marked by consistent, intentional, extravagant generosity.

She leaves her Thanksliving post with a prayer:

Be thankful. May your eyes be opened to the astonishing beauty all around you. I pray that you feel your whole world pulsing with glory and holiness and divine blessing – that you experience the great love of God for the first time, or for the hundredth time. Be touched. I pray that your relationships are rich and fruitful. I pray that someone hugs you. I pray that, at least once during this season, you are so mind-numbingly overwhelmed with gratitude that all you can say is, “Wow.”

And I pray that as that inevitable knot of emotions, that tangled up ball of joy and gratitude and “I-don’t-deserve-this” and the sheer exhaustion from being so intensely happy, wells up inside of you, that you don’t quench it. I pray that you let the joy and the gratitude keep welling up until it spills right out onto other people.



I pray that your grateful day is a big, beautiful gateway to a grateful life – a life marked by contentment, joy, and consistent, intentional generosity. I pray that giving consumes you, that you can’t not give, that you are compelled.

“For the love of God compels us…” [2 Corinthians 5:14]

Be touched, but be moved.

Be in the attitude

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

The beauty of this saying is how it emphasizes practice. I like that. I like this! What may I practice regularly to keep me living a thankful life?

Affirm. Ahem. I learned about affirming years ago; it becomes, simply, the Law of Attraction. When we think thankful thoughts we bring more into our lives to be thankful for. Yes. And I'm not terrific at it. I don't think many people I know meditate as a practice or routinely look at themselves in the mirror of a morning and, well, declare, "Gee, how abundant my life is!" or "I'm so grateful for who I am and what I have." (Maybe more do than I know... do you?) I learned years ago of all this - any of this - for coming closer to God and godliness, and think the practice of it would keep me content. "I do love my life!" When I'm content my thoughts are positive.

Keep a gratitude journal. I do keep my journal, though plenty of days I simply list things I've done during the day. But focusing as I write, focusing particularly on people to whom I'm grateful, might make a bigger impact on my "happy" (and on future writing)... bigger than focusing on things, or projects I've started and finished. Maybe, too, an effective way to generate, stimulate, thankfulness would be to write about what life would be like, well, without my blessings - rather than tallying the good. Though I can't go for long without writing how blessed I am! We are... all of us! You and me.

Smile. Of course. I'm softened and drawn out to Heavenly Father with gratitude when I fix my face. I call it that. I smile often, I try to... and if/when I don't, I "feel" that (as an exercise) and fix it.

Help others. Deepak Chopra says that "ego" connotes “edging God out.” (Whoa...) Was Paul referring to such in Romans 7:23 when he wrote... But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Focusing on just me and my perceived inadequacies cuts me right off from God. There's sure "warring" going on there when I'm inordinately concerned with myself. Focusing on others will keep me connected with God too. And living thankful.

Recite things in my mind I'm thankful for as I fall asleep... from my head to my toes in my comfortable bed. Yes, body parts and comfy things for starters, and move on from there (if I'm still awake, he). You'll think this is weird but in the night if I wake like to roll over I talk to myself, "Oh Father..." offering a prayer - thanks for someone or other's love or care or understanding of me, for them being them. Maybe a blessing for understanding someone I'm not getting along with (or that's not getting along with me), or for someone who may not be comfortable this very night.

Pray. Yes, pray. Prayer is a practice. Prayer like gratitude is a priority! Prayer brings gratitude. Mm, prayer is gratitude. Let's be in the attitude.
-----

"We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” - Cynthia Ozickw

"The entire experience of gratitude is about... pay[ing] attention to the good things in life we’d otherwise take for granted. - Jason Marsh

The heart of the giver

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Patrick came into the house grinning with one hand curiously

behind his back. It was not a special day for us so I gave him a quick kiss

and tried to look over his shoulder to see what he was hiding. I cringed!

My dear husband backed away still smiling, and I could see a

sparkle in his eyes that told me he was ready to make my day. When he

handed me the pot of mums, I tried very hard to smile. I think I said a

weak “thanks,” along with the question “What is this for?” I knew my

disappointment was not hidden from him, because I watched the light

fade from his eyes and the grin turn into pursed lips. He shrugged and

said he was just thinking of me and wanted to say, “I love you.”

I like mums, sort of, but they are not my favorite flowers. They don’t

speak to me about love. To me they did not convey the message that he

was thinking of me.


I would have wanted roses, but he brought mums.

He wanted me to know the love he had for me, and I gave him cordial

“thanks.” I had expectations he failed to meet, and though I may have

uttered the word thanks, I was, in truth, ungrateful.

Over the years I have come to learn that my ingratitude often stems

from my self-centered desires, but, when I see the gift and recognize the

heart of the giver, I am filled with thanksgiving. It does not matter what

is placed in my hands. It only matters who placed it there. When I see

that God sends the rain as a gift, even when I long for sunshine, I will be

blessed. Thanks for the giver is so much greater than a thank you for the

gift!
-----

- Carolynn Scully -
http://30daysofthanksgiving.com/devotionals/bonus-day/

I can't wait until I'm eight... for then I'll be baptized you see

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Thankful for this reminder, isn't it great! Abbie, Brigham, Joseph, and recently Landon have each turned eight and been baptized so far - it's Brady's turn next year. Just giving me a heads up.

I love it!

Little moments

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

I write in my journal every day. Every day I recount stuff I do, think, hope, feel. Sometimes it's hard to get to writing like I like, here on the blog and in my journal, but I do it (even when I lag) because I want the little moments that are my life to be recalled.

I work to receive "all that the Father has" to bless me. Hardship or joy, this is intertwined and I've ceased asking for the one and not the other; wanting the one and eschewing the other... To record, then, is to accept. Acknowledge and learn.

I write in my journal every day. That little habit, those little moments, let  me live thankful.

Imagine!

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life he he!

If you're dad or a person who eye-rolls or says "Oh brother," mmm.... maybe don't read. This story (link) made me laugh right out loud! TiCkLeD mE pINk!

"It is a blessed thing to have an imagination that can always make you satisfied, no matter how you are fixed."

-----

The Pleasantly Plump Lady And The See-Saw

Want to get rid of ridiculously painful obsessions with an elaborately whimsical plan that involves that illustrious accessory we humans come with... the Imagination? 

If you’re creative, chances are you’re also sensitive. High sensitivity is a gift in the creative process. Intense feelings are amazing triggers for poetry, painting, music, plays, writing, and large portraits of our moms riding Harleys.
 

Sensitivity is also a pain.
 

The unpleasantries of life can be amplified when you're a deep feeler. Experiences some people just brush off like lint can be experienced by the sensitive creative person like a haunted house where the same unnerving thought is lurking behind every corner, jumping at you from under the sofa, ruining a day that could be filled with reverie, laughter, and papaya.
 

Ever have one of those awful thoughts that won’t leave you alone?
 
Or your blood pressure gets out of whack because you're rehearsing a squabble in your head with that - THAT - person?
 

Or sometimes you let your self-criticism buzz around your brain like a mosquito circulating around your ears in the middle of a restless night?
 

If you answered yes, read more. If you answered no, you're done here.
 

So I’m going to share with you kindred creative-sensitives about how my slightly eccentric imagination saves me from life’s cruel and merciless moments (which is a creative person’s melodramatic way of saying, "life's stuff that happens because we're alive.") 

So take a thought that bugs or terrorizes you. If you don’t have one right now, apply this at the appropriate occasion (Thanksgiving with the family?)

First, make friends with the thought by neutralizing it.  We’re human and we sometimes get caught up in treacherous mind storms, replaying things over in our minds, and then coming down on ourselves for what we think we ought to have said, or we blame, resent , or engage in other garden variety self-flagellation at it’s very best. Acknowledge that you are human and know that as a human, self-torment is kinda normal.

Welcome to the species. Now that you're aware of it, try something creative instead. 

Next, imagine that you could put the thought in a little tiny box with shiny silver wrapping paper (perhaps with a hologramatic sheen) and tie a multi-color ribbon around it (I prefer satin). Attach a little card that says, “Okay then, bye, bye."

Place the little gift box with the treacherous, (now neutralized), thought on the down end of a see-saw. (Remember those? Popular before injury lawsuits applied to playground equipment.) And stand back.

digitalpenciltoo.blogspot.com

Look up, out of the white fluffy cloud-shaped clouds is a pleasantly rotund woman wearing a tutu, holding an umbrella, laughing wildly and I mean raucously guffawing and falling at just the right speed down to the upside of that seesaw.

Boing!!!

The little gift box with the treacherous (now neutralized) thought goes flying through the air to the nearest ocean which is conveniently located within your sight (because in the creative process things are NOT linear, they are free to be where we need them).

The gift is flying through the air (as I said earlier, but I have a short attention span so am repeating it again just in case you do too) and some sea gulls are batting it back and forth until they get bored with the little gift box with the treacherous... (you know)... and it falls into the ocean where dolphins nab it and tag team it in circles for awhile before they TOO get bored with the little gift box with the now rather pureed thought, and it falls to the bottom of the ocean and is eaten by a large sea turtle named Cecil because this happens to be on his diet this week.

By this time the thought, because of this elaborately absurd (and yet delightfully entertaining- at least to the author) story, has completely lost all of its negative charge. And that’s how the imagination acts as something that can salve (“save” with an added “l” for love) the highly sensitive creative person's obsessive thinking.

Other short cuts:

• Brush the thought off as if it is lint.
• Swat it like it’s a mosquito.
• Replace the thought with an image of you flying over a field of radically majestic beauty.
• Do a yoga balancing pose like Tree. 
• Imagine the thought in a cartoon bubble over your head, a seagull comes by and eats it, and then watch as the seagull flies over the ocean and poops it out.
• Give your cat a bath.

All okay

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

Is this you ever, one of these characters? Uhm it sure is me... all of 'em!

And ahhh, the teeter-totter... harumph! LIFE. Big old balancing act. I'm frequently out on one end or the other just like these guys, how 'bout you? Up-and-down and mostly that's an adventure but, o o o p s, sometimes I'm totally upended. (Don't'cha love Lumpy, the big guy? The proverbial "elephant in the room," an obvious "truth being ignored; the problem no one wants to discuss.")

Aw, ya' know how that goes. It makes my heart race. I get Winnie-the-Pooh-ish and grasp for something or other nearby to hold on to. "Whatever will I do?" I think, think, think. "Oh bother."

Well yeah. There are days. (I hadn't known Life would be like this when I was a kid loving the highs and lows of the playground!) Here's just one snapshot: the up, down and sometimes seriously stuck of real Life. And the way that makes us feel...

unless...

... well, unless not.

Can I be even-keeled even when Life is not? When I feel uprooted, upbraided, upended... or uptight? Downright uppity? How 'bout downhearted, -graded or -trodden... you know. Downfallen.

I (swallow hard here) can think of a way.

Live thankful. LIVE thankful! It is extremely difficult to be discontent when I am actively thankful.

There are days. Yeah, and there are moments... when I'm finally (at last and entirely) willing to just give live thanks. Be upheld by Jesus Christ on Whom I may keep a firm grasp.

The upshot being, thank goodness, that I'm okay.

Light everlasting

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

And so it did two days ago. Like we've adjusted our clocks, we've adjusted our brains these past two days to the varied light. 2:30 in the afternoon feels uncomfortably close to dinnertime the way the light is waning already and the sun is reaching for the west mountain. My bedtime feels like 6:00 p.m.! (Or it feels like it in my body.) Yeah, I wane naturally when the light does, and at 6:00 it's already full dark.

I'm grateful today for a bunch of little things. My Chocolate Cheerios for breakfast with almond milk, good-tasting and low-cal. The colors of pink in my plaid shirt I'm wearing! The snow that fell overnight making, again, a "wintry" morning. That the beef stew I made for lunch turned out scrumptious - I put parsnips in it! My prayerful thoughts as I peeled potatoes for the crock pot earlier and gathered those from the sink into the trash... beseechings, really, for Christ to please take away my fumbling weaknesses... and the simple desire I have to be like His Son.

For these same thoughts as I set the table for lunch, filling water glasses and slicing watermelon (still!) and French bread (buttering it for toasting in the oven); then for the notion that entered my mind that I may be thankful for weaknesses. Human tendencies. My broken heart. For a heart that wants to do good! And I may be grateful for Christ who is ever available, never varying in his promise, I will not leave you comfortless (John 14:18).

The Giver, not the gift

ThanksLIVING: Living a Thankful Life

From a Christian blogger:

Gratitude is essential for a wholeness of our body, mind and spirit. Growing up, I loved my parents and was thankful for the family that God blessed me with, but I didn't have a fully grounded view on just how sacrificially they loved and served me. I selfishly expected them to do my laundry, make my lunch, attend every dance recital, and base their schedule around my every need. As I have grown up I have become increasingly aware of just how blessed I am. The more I recognize my thankfulness for who my parents are, the more my love for them grows.

When I realize the characteristic of the giver, rather than focusing on the gift, an attitude of gratitude will become a reorientation of my life. Jesus chastised those that didn't value the healing He gave as a gift. When I think about the passing of Thanksgiving, and the hardening of my heart that comes from "type A" living around the Christmas holidays, I am convicted by how much I miss the giver for the gifts. I don't value the one who offers provision for my life and covers me with unconditional love. I pray that my impulse to thank God becomes the definition of my life.

I pray that my gratitude will push me towards a recognition of the source of life and love. As I allow myself to be overwhelmed with the giver of every good and perfect gift, I can't help but live a life of worship and keep His words ever on my lips.