What can you be grateful for?

For a couple of days now I have been thinking so much about being grateful and what does that mean.  We all casually say we’re thankful for things. Thankful for our spouses, thankful for our kids, thankful for our health, thankful for our jobs, and so on and so on, but are those just words that we say or are we truly grateful to where we feel if in the pit of our stomachs? Unfortunately, I think we say it a little too casually and take too many things for granted in our lives. If we were truly grateful, I believe we would live a little differently! I think we would spend more quality time with the amazing people we’re blessed to have in our lives. Hug a little longer, call a little more, drive out of our way, buy that plane ticket, send that text, just make sure those in our lives really know just how grateful we are to have them.

I set tonight in the prayer service of a dear friend and cheer mom that I have gotten to know over the past few years who is battling cancer right now.  I watched her two children sitting there and I thought she must think what if I don’t get to watch my kids grow up, what if I don’t get to attend their weddings and see my grand kids born. We so casually look at our kids and say when you go to college I will this, on your wedding day we will this, and just wait until you have kids! Just think for a moment about the quality time we miss out on with our kids because we let life or other people get in the way. Do we ever stop to think that we may not have tomorrow? Nobody is promised tomorrow. You know I almost didn’t go tonight. I was tired and cold and tried to come up with a million different reasons, but how terribly selfish of me. I sit there tonight healthy! I lost focus of that for a little bit today!

What if instead of getting up in the morning and moaning and groaning about going to work that we get up and say thank you Jesus for giving me this job at this exact moment in my life so I can provide for my family. What if instead of sleeping in and not hitting the gym we jump out of bed and say thank you Jesus that I am healthy enough to get up and go to the gym. Thank you I can see, I can hear, I can feel, I can touch, I can speak. Are  we truly thankful for those things? Do we really stop and think about the people who don’t have those things?

I don’t want to go to bed tonight without feeling, really feeling, and letting those I love know just how grateful and blessed I am. Thank you to my mom for being my rock through so much and never, ever giving up on me. Thank you to my brother for working so hard over the past 5 years and allowing me to work from home, thank you to my husband for loving me like I have never known love. Thank you to my kids for letting me be their other mom. Thank you for my amazing family that I take for granted. Thank you to my girlfriends that have been here through so much and without whom I would be lost. Thank God for peace, for strength, for loving me when I was unlovable and always providing. Thank you for my health and a sound mind. Tonight I want to go to bed with such a grateful heart that I wake up in the morning feeling like I am so truly and abundantly blessed!

It’s Thanksgiving time. What are you truly thankful for? Have you told those in your life how much they mean to you? Don’t wait until something is taken from you to realize all you have been blessed with. Do it now! Right now! Having a grateful heart every morning you get up will change your life, will change your focus, will change your goals and what you do for others. Always remember, those things you take for granted, somebody else is praying for that exact thing right now! I may not have everything I want in life, but I have everything I need and more!

Let’s take a moment tonight as we go to bed, or tomorrow as we get up and say I love you, say I’m sorry, say thank you and not have regrets and wake up someday wishing we had done things different! Do them right now!

I love you all so much and I am so grateful that you’re all along for this journey!

With love for you all!

Shauna