Is it just me, or have I been thankful for some really weird things lately? I blame all of my Facebook friends who did "Today I'm thankful for..." statuses all through November.
First of all, I'm so thankful I'm finally done with my 1st trimester and seem to also be done with morning sickness! Yay!
But that's not one of the weird ones. It gets better.
This morning, for example, I was scrubbing mouse droppings off my kitchen counter and stove-top, and I randomly thought, "These were long over-due for a good scrub-down and disinfecting anyway. I'm thankful to those mice for forcing me to stop procrastinating on this!"
Yes, I really thought that.
This afternoon, I was emptying several containers of REALLY old left-overs from my fridge. (If there's anything you don't want to do when you're dealing with morning sickness, it's clean out your fridge, or look at leftovers at all, and since that's been me for the past 2 months, things had gotten SUPER ugly, as in, month-old-salmon ugly.) As I was dumping moldy cooked broccoli into my compost pile, I suddenly thought, "I'm so thankful for my cold! My nose is so stuffed up I can hardly smell these!"
Wow.
I promise I'm not bragging about how awesome and thankful I am. I know I can't take credit for it. I'm as surprised by it as anyone. As soon as I thought these things I thought, "What?! Where did that come from? What a weird thing to be thankful for!"
So yes, all you thankful status people, I blame you. Usually, I'm a complainer, a first-world-problems person. As far as I know, I've never been this ridiculously cheerful, glass-half-full person before in my life. Has anyone else gotten into this habit since the Thanksgiving?
I enjoyed your post, Rebecca. What great examples of being able to find something to be grateful for in circumstances that are not particularly ideal.
ReplyDeleteI am meeting with a group of women and we are currently going through the book "Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy" by Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It has been an encouraging time and what a great reminder to purpose in our hearts to be grateful and to show gratitude on purpose.
Here are some of my favorite quotes so far:
"Gratitude has a big job to do in us and in our hearts. And it is one of the chief ways that God infuses joy and resilience into the daily struggle of life."
"On the other hand, when we give in to whining, murmuring, and complaining, we end up on a destructive slide that ultimately leads to bitterness and broken relationships."
She stresses that gratitude is a choice and that
"it is one of the ways that God infuses joy and resilience into the daily struggle of life."
Referring to Romans 1:21,"Although they knew God,they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.", she makes a point that ingratitude leads us down a slippery slope as the enemy uses that to draw us to getting our needs met in in appropriate ways. This verse is tucked right in the middle of a list of all kinds of terrible sins. Sins you and I would never want to commit...yet it is so easy sometimes to forget to be grateful...and we don't always realize how weighty that is....and the effect it has on us and on those around us.
We are only on chapter four but I am looking forward to reading the rest of the book....I definitely want to practice gratitude on purpose!!!
Love you!
Haha. Maybe it's the baby who's so cheerful, and it's affecting you! Speaking of which ... you're pregnant?! Apparently I missed THAT memo. Congratulations!
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