A month of Thanksgiving

Welcome to November!

Let the hustle and bustle begin.  How many days until Christmas?  Now that Halloween is over it is now "officially" the Christmas season.  It is so easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of the holiday season.  There is so much to do.  There are cards to send and gifts to buy and cookies to bake and a dinner to prepare and a tree to buy and gifts to wrap and a house to decorate and shopping for food and decorating a tree and... and... and so on.

I am going to begin this Christmas season continuing the tradition of gratitudes I began at the New Year.  My goal was to reach 1000 gratitudes.  You can see by the numbers corresponding to the gratitudes at the bottom of my post that I am off tempo.  I'm going to have to kick up the gratitude attitude into high gear to reach 1000 gratitudes by December 31st.  I'm a little ashamed of myself.

I am an extremely blessed person.  And yet, every time I post I struggle with my little list at the bottom of my post.  Lately I've been proud of myself if I come up with five items.  Pathetic.  I was hoping this exercise would help me develop an attitude of gratitude.  I'm sure it has helped, but I'm a long way from having it come naturally.  *head hanging and eyes downcast.  Even though I am so blessed and have a very comfortable life, I still take too much of it for granted.  It is still much easier for me to focus on the flaws than the beauty.  I still see the glass half empty.

Last night I saw a show called 19 Kids and Counting.  I had heard of this show, but I'd never seen it.  Wow, that mom is the sweetest woman I have ever seen.  Even when she was obviously unhappy with her haircut and new style, she smiled and pointed out all the best things about it.  It was her birthday and her friend from high school gave her a make-over as a birthday gift (and to be on the show, I'm sure) anyway, it was quite obvious the mom was not thrilled with her new look.  Yet, she cared much more about the feelings of her friend than she did about her hair.  She was grateful for the gift of time with her friend and realized her hair would grow back.  She was also given a gift of a trip to Japan and China.  Just before the family was to leave on the trip six of the kids got sick.  It looked as if they are going to have to cancel the trip.  She still smiled and shared how grateful she was to have this snuggle time with sick kids because before you know it they are grown up and they don't snuggle with you when they don't feel well.  She finds a silver lining in every single cloud.  What a wonderful example of an attitude of gratitude.

And here's the thought bubble I have hovering over my head, "Is she for REAL?"  I'm such a cynic.

But the only person that can change me is me.  So here we are at the beginning of November.  This is the month of Thanksgiving.  I can do gratitude.  I have blessings to spare.

647.  Time in my day to sit and focus on gratitude
648.  Watching my son get excited about school and good grades
649.  The opportunity to participate in Operation Christmas Child and be excited to do so
650.  An office chair that is pretty darn comfortable
651.  Fall weather when the temperature is this mild and it isn't raining
652.  My health (I really need to stop taking it for granted and take better care of this body)
653.  Clean water to drink (sometimes I think about how precious clean water is and how I take it for granted)
656.  Living in a free country (even though the campaigning is grating on everyone's nerves, no one is afraid for their lives if there is a change in administration or not)
657.  Having a job (I know I complain, but I am glad I have a job)
658.  Having a pretty fair minded boss (I know I complain about Mr. Non-confrontational, but he's mostly a good guy)
659.  The view of the river from my desk 
660.  My faith (I absolutely know I take my faith for granted and I don't have it because of me)

Linking with Emily at Imperfect Prose on Thursday.