Be Thankful

I want to be more grateful this year. It's not exactly a new year's resolution, as I don't even really believe those work most of the time. They're too easy to make and too hard to keep. Also, you really shouldn't wait for January 1st to change something that you think needs changing. Just begin changing now. It doesn't matter if it's July 13th, or October 21st. Just make up your mind and take those "baby steps" to begin to transform that bad habit into the good one or the good one into a better one.

Anyway, I discovered the past year that you can't be grateful and complain at the same time. So here I go with the being transparent again. My name is Beth and I am a complain-a-holic. I am not joking. I really have always had a tendency to find things wrong instead of right. To be a glass-half-empty person instead of a glass-half-full person. To look at the dark cloud and not its silver lining.

But I am changing. God is changing me. For me, gratefulness has to be learned. I am learning, but I'm sometimes a slow learner. God is teaching me, little by little and day by day to begin seeing what I have instead of what I don't. He is showing me how to focus on my blessings and not my needs. He is miraculously turning this complainer into a grateful, thankful woman.

This Christmas (2012), we got our children involved in some anonymous giving to a couple of families we knew who were in need. They really enjoyed it and so did I. Seeing them excited about passing along a simple material blessing to someone was such a neat thing to watch as a parent. It is what I have been trying to teach them since they were very little children, that "Christmas is a season of giving," as I heard Kathie Lee Gifford say way back in the mid-1990s when her children were little. She was asked if it was difficult to keep her kids from being spoiled when they were children of two rich, famous people. They were privileged with things and money from the time they were born. She said it wasn't really a big problem for their family because ever since she and Frank had the kids, she would tell them that Christmas is a season of giving (not getting!), and actively get them involved in giving gifts to those less fortunate. I thought that was pretty good advice so I used it with our kids. Though we are certainly neither rich nor famous, we still have 3 normal children who tend to think only of themselves and what they want instead of thinking of the needs and wants of others.



With all of the emphasis on the giving, imagine my surprise when, as we were getting ready to leave on a vacation out of state, my husband decided to check the mailbox one last time before we left. He brought one single white envelope to the car and handed it to me. It was an anonymous gift. It contained more money than I've ever been given at once and a gift card to a store! Someone thought of us. It made me cry. I could not believe that with all the talk I had been doing around our house about the importance of being a gracious and generous giver, someone actually thought about giving to us! Wow. An unexpected gift, a blessing.

And I am grateful. Grateful to the giver. Grateful to God. Just grateful.

Thank you!