Sometimes people overwhelm me with the praise they gift to the point where I can barely even look them in the eye, sweet as they are being. In so many ways I fall short- I am just a person with very real flaws trying to do the best she can on any given day. Some days, I really don’t feel like that effort is anywhere near as good as it should be. And I have been told by others that they perceive me as handling our family’s circumstance with enormous grace.  What I would wish to give back in return is the picture of me sobbing- calm abandoned in a firestorm of stress- for twenty minutes straight a couple of weeks ago because a computer glitch had wiped out two weeks of work on a project for one of my classes. So, since I can’t give you a video of that moment, I’m just going to tell you- yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes. I have neither grace nor abilities but what the Lord grants me.

What I did once I was done crying was dig in and redo the work, which left me prickling with bitter edges as I considered all of the demands on my time. Yes, I’m in school. Yes, I’m doing habilitation by myself because right now…there isn’t someone in that therapy position yet. Yes, I’m homeschooling Hannah now too because she asked for that again a couple of months ago. I have a lot of pressure in my life from events expected and unexpected over the past few months. So yes, I was struggling to feel a number of things, gratitude among them, as I was dealing with that situation. And yet, my life also has many things I should be honoring with appreciation and wholehearted thankfulness.

Of course, this is the time of year in my country where people start to focus on gratitude, and for many it is distilled down to a single day’s worth of celebrating thankfulness. For a long time I have felt like I benefit more from finding things to be grateful for on a regular basis. Our family used to keep a gratitude box that we each entered a slip for each day of a few things we were thankful for and then read all of the notes at the end of the week. I loved that practice, but it became lost with so many fragments of my former pursuits as Tony’s needs began to reshape our activities and traditions.

My husband and I have been discussing for a while what we feel is the need within our family to do more to recognize the blessings we do have. I mentioned to him a post done by one of my teachers a few weeks ago about trying to embrace gratitude in her life more, and he read to our family an article from Psychology Today by Amy Morin on “7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude.” After a brief discussion of these benefits, our family decided to try and spend a few minutes each day writing in gratitude journals.

I was honestly hoping for that benefit of increased “mental strength” and decreased stress. Heavily inflated amounts of stress and I have become joined at the hip for the past few years now, and I’d like us to spend at least a little bit of time away from each other. So a couple of weeks ago, we did a public therapy trip to Target where we bought journals and pens that I velcroed to the covers once we got home. Our home plays host to a well-concealed, ravenous pen-eating beastie that I knew would sideline our writing efforts by gluttonously feasting on these pens if not discouraged by a bit of adhesion.

For about two weeks now, we’ve been diligently trying to write in our gratitude journals for a few minutes every day. The first day, I found that the longer I wrote, the happier I felt. A few days were difficult because I was feeling pecked apart by worries and obligations, but I found it was still beneficial to spend some time recognizing that there were some things in each day that could be celebrated. Some of the things I feel grateful about would seem understated and perhaps ping another person’s “crazy” meter. Purple ink and the Orgain Peppermint Hot Cocoa Protein Powder I found on a trip to Sprouts (seriously, they should sell that stuff all year round), for example. But they are my simple treasures, and I find it does indeed help to embrace them for the joy they bring.

There are many things of greater significance I can be grateful for as well, some too personal to divulge on-line. But I am going to share this: I know who is coming to work with our family when it comes to habilitation, and in every point of this matter our family is blessed. I live on the outskirts of a large metro area, so people often assume it’s easy to find people who want that kind of work. Not so. Let me just say that if this person who will be taking over habilitation mid December hadn’t wanted to make that transition, we likely would have had nobody else but me to fill that roll- indefinitely. Tony has a bond with this person, and as we have discussed many times before, that matters when it comes to outcomes. This person is knowledgeable, compassionate, and a hard worker. This is an enormous amount of things to be grateful for in one person’s choice.

There are going to be a lot of changes coming in the future…there always are. Sometimes that can be hard to make peace with because I like a lot of constancy in certain areas. But in the end, change actually is the constancy. And, with that are always moments to be thankful for.

Yes, I’m super stressed (and riddled with plenty of flaws related to my handling of said stress, in case you were in any doubt). But I’m also super blessed. And on one final note, thank you for spending some of your valuable time reading a little bit about our world.