May you find many reasons to be thankful today. May you take the opportunity to tell others you are thankful for them. And I also hope that you hear others express their gratitude for you. Happy Thanksgiving, friends. And if this day is woven through with some sadness for you, as can happen during the holidays, know that you …
In Others’ Words: Being Thankful for Octobers
I know people who say that autumn is their favorite time of year. That’s not the case for me, but I do enjoy autumn and watching the trees change colors. And I especially enjoy the month of October. It’s right in between September and November — the month when we can catch our breath after running full tilt from summer …
In Others’ Words: Adjusting our Emotional Tides
For me, it seems I always come back to gratitude. There are certainly a lot of other emotions that demand my attention — wanting dominance in my life. And yes, I started to list them off and then deleted the list because why name all the emotional ups and downs I experience any given day? Disappointment can be one of the …
In Others’ Words: Haves versus Wants
If I could sum up today’s quote in two words, they would be: Be grateful. We can spend a lot of time thinking about what we want — what we don’t have or what we think we deserve. Oftentimes what we have is never enough and setting our minds on “wants” creates a mindset of discontent. And then we get …
In Others’ Words: A Thanksgiving Prayer
Thanksgiving Day is the day after tomorrow. I paused for a moment after I wrote that sentence … caught my breath and thought, Is that correct? Thanksgiving is that close? Yes, it is. I spent Monday grocery shopping, prepping for Wednesday, when family comes over and helps with the day-before cooking. That’s a newer family tradition that makes Thanksgiving Day much more relaxed. We’ll …
In Others’ Words: Do the Math
Sometimes in the midst of all the busyness, we just have to stop and do the math. To be honest, I’m tripping up over a couple of things I haven’t gotten done … yet. Or still. I’m trying … but things just aren’t coming together like I see them in my head. It’s frustrating. At the end of the day, …
In Others’ Words: Think Big or Think Small
It’s Monday … the beginning of a new week. Are you planning on thinking at all this week? Looking ahead at my week, there’s going to be a whole lof of thinking going on. And I love the challenge put forth in “The Donald’s” quote: I might as well Think Big. Want to join me? At first read, …
In Others’ Words: Prayer at Its Best
I always get to Friday and pause … look back to Monday’s post … and consider all that has transpired between the hopes of that “then” and the realities of today’s “now.” Monday included moments of celebration — really? I finaled in a writing contest? — and Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday included cold splashes of reality that brought me to knees. …
In Others’ Words: In Everything …
Two words stand out to me in Psalm 9:1 — the word whole and the word recount. As I thought through Psalm 9:1, I wondered: Do I ever give half-hearted thanks to God? Or do I ever forget to thank him altogether? And then there’s that idea of recounting … when I took a closer look at what the Hebrew …
A Grateful Attitude
“Gratitude … goes beyond the “mine” and “thine” and claims the truth that all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to …