Gratitude

After the crazy weekend I have had I felt it best to have a day of gratitude...instead of focusing on me and what I need to fix I need to focus on all the good in my life.  Each year when Thanksgiving comes around we start a gratitude journal.  We are supposed to write 10 different things each night that we are grateful for.  At first that task seems hard.  It's easy the first day to list your family members, home, perhaps religion, the Savior, etc etc....but as the week progresses you really have to stop and focus on life around you. If you continue to do it you start to notice you have so much more to be grateful for that you become more optimistic and forget some of life's struggles that seem to weigh us down.

I wasn't very good about keeping up with mine this year, so I decided to start fresh.  Sometimes we have to experience a situation that makes us realize we won't be here forever to realize we aren't as appreciative for our everyday life.  I have always love the quote, "What if we woke up today with only the things that you thanked God for yesterday?".  It is such a profound statement that can really make you think about the kind of person you are.  Do you rush through a prayer, do you thank our Heavenly Father for all that you have or do you race through a prayer with an almost ritual of a prayer? Do we focus on our needs, or maybe the needs of others?  Do you ever just say thank you?

As a Monday tradition we hold Family Home Evening.  Like most nights it becomes quite the struggle to get my kids to remain calm and still for the 15-30 minutes we prepared.  We talked about the plan of Happiness.  For those of you who may not be a Mormon I will give a quick overview. Before we came to earth we lived in heaven, where we chose to come to earth and have a savior redeem us from our sins and pains of this world, through accepting him, his sacrifice and repenting we have the opportunity to return to heaven to live with our family and Heavenly Father for an eternity....the final question we asked was, "why is it called the plan of happiness?".  No one could answer because of course no one was listening.  The answer is simply that we will be with the ones we love most.  What a simple as wet but it means so much.

This week is Valentine's day, so we decided we would write valentine cards for everyone in our family telling each other why we love them.  We are doing this because we want to always strive for the plan of happiness, but we also want our family members to feel how grateful we are for them and what they contribute to in our lives.

Today I challenged myself to one 30 minutes prayer a week thanking my Heavenly Father for the things in life he has blessed me with.  I am going to take time each day to let those in my life know I love them and want them to be part of my life for an eternity, and in the end I will have Joy in me.