Gratitude
(noun) - the state of being grateful (appreciative of benefits received) (Merriam-Webster.com)
Perhaps gratitude could be meshed in with an article on “mindset,” but if the first two months of 2025 have taught me anything, it’s that choosing gratitude will make any hard day better than you’d think it could be. I’d like to say that by the end of February I was successfully using gratitude daily to help my attitude, but I would be lying. I’m writing this is a hotel room, with my youngest child taking a nap at 9 o’clock in the morning because he had an hour long melt down about the pool being closed.
I did NOT approach that situation with gratitude or grace. I am feeling grateful NOW because we were able to get the older boys out to do something so the youngest could have this opportunity for said nap AND I’m still feeling frustrated that all I wanted to do was join him in shedding tears for being disappointed.
I’ll be honesty, gratitude is not something I’ve been terrible at, but I do think I’ve not been great at allowing gratitude to change my outlook on situations. Sometimes making a gratitude list has felt like an obligation to make sure I wasn’t taking anything for granted. However, when I look back at the last two months I can pick out certain points that I walked into a situation with gratitude and it helped me to shift my perspective of the overall circumstances.
One of those times, I had journaled that very morning a prayer expressing gratitude for reliable vehicles, a comfortable home and the ability to have one of us (myself or my husband) to keep sick kids home. Little did I know we would get stuck and have to be pulled out of a drift followed by being snowed in WITH sick kids that entire week.
Then the following two weeks after that we spent more nights away from our own beds in order to NOT miss school, AND yet, we were still very comfortable and extremely well taken care of in spite of not being in our own home; in spite of the bad weather we were still able to get to the places we needed to be; in spite of unsettled circumstances we could approach it all with grace because of all that we had to be grateful for.
It’s been a few days since I first started writing this post and since the incident at the hotel room; even though I’ve had all this in the back of my head, I’m not too sure that I’ve done too great in the gratitude department. Life allows us to get distracted and then, if we aren’t careful, we find ourselves down the rabbit hole of shame because of what we AREN’T doing - that’s not what grace and gratitude are about.
I”ll admit, I’ve always cringed at the comments of “be grateful for dirty dishes, those mean you can feed your family” and others, but I will say I have been grateful to be able to cook for my family again these last few days. No, I’m not sure I can ever say I’m grateful for the dirty dishes AND yet, I try to avoid dwelling there for too long because the grace that comes with being grateful WHILE preparing the meal is where the real shift happens.
“The more you practice the art of thankfulness, the more you have to be thankful for.”
Just like waking up early definitely isn’t my favorite, being able to start my day with movement and reading is something I am daily grateful for. The workouts that are challenging and make me work harder than I sometimes feel like doing remind me to be grateful that I can ask my body to be challenged in that way. Choosing to sit in a quiet house and write a blog post instead of vegging out on the couch requires disciplined gratitude that I can share my thoughts and hopefully encourage others through my own lessons learned.
Being disciplined in gratitude will most likely, at times, feel duty-like. I think it can be similar to working a muscle repetitively to learn a technique so well that it’s an automatic response when it’s required; gratitude can be worked on in order to become the initial first response when we would otherwise complain or whine about things outside our control.
