Am I truly thankful?

Everywhere you turn you hear and see about being thankful. This is, after all, Thanksgiving month. Everything is so commercialized about being thankful. The kids cartoons are centered around being thankful. Ads on tv are about being thankful. Why are we only reminded to be thankful once a year? Shouldn't we be thankful every single second of every day? I know I should be but fall short many many times in that area. How about you? It is so easy in todays' society to be ungrateful, impatient, uncaring, unloving - pretty much anything negative. It's every where! We are always taught by society to want bigger and better. To never settle. Never be satisfied with what we have. Go in debt so you can get everything you want. Notice I said "want" and not "need". Now, don't get me wrong - there is nothing wrong in having wants. I know there are tons of "wants" sitting in my house. But is that where are focus is? Are we turning into ungrateful people that we lose site of what is important? Are we so caught up in "keeping up with the Jones's" that we forget to stop and think and reflect about what we have already and who we have and be thankful? I bet if we were all challenged to go a month and to think of something positive in every situation and to be thankful for it, we wouldn't last a few days. It's always so easy to see the bad in things and in people that we often focus on the negative and forget to even look for the positive. I know I've caught myself doing that very same thing. It's a hard challenge and it takes a lot of work to find the good in situations and in people sometimes. If you stop and think about it, there are numerous things to be thankful for. We are truly a blessed country. We have so many opportunities that other people are not afforded.

I am thankful today. Not just today, but I am always thankful. I forget to say that I am and I know my attitude has not always shown thankfulness, but at the end of the day, I am truly thankful.

First and foremost for Jesus and for the hope of heaven. Do I truly show that I am thankful for Him and His sacrifice and live my life every day showing Him I love Him and serving Him?

I am thankful for the family God has given me. I have a husband who loves me and knows what his responsibilities are. I am blessed that he goes to work every day so that I can be at home with my children and do my duties at home.

I am thankful for my children. They are hard work. They are very challenging, but they are very rewarding. I often feel I am failing them as a parent and that they will never grow up to be the young men they need to be, but then I have to stop, breathe, and remind myself that life is not perfect. They are not perfect. I am not perfect. We all make mistakes. Life is full of one mistake after another, but we try to learn from them and go on.

I am thankful for my bigger family - parents, in laws, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. I am so thankful to have those close to me. I am so thankful for those who are just a phone call away when I am having a bad day and having a serious melt down - you know who you are. :)

I am thankful for my house, food, clothing, car - pretty much every material thing I have that makes my day more enjoyable and pleasant. We could all think about our material things and always think we need bigger and better, but realistically - our houses are fine. Yes, they may need fixing and the carpet might need to be replaced, the walls might need to be painted, and the list goes on and on, but does your home keep you warm in the winter, keep you cool in the summer, protect you from storms? Yes! Do you have enough food to eat? Yes. Are you starving? No. Do you have a vehicle to get you places you need to go? Are you ever really stuck without any way of getting anywhere? No. And trust me. If anyone had reason to complain in this area - it would be me because you know we only have one car. But I have lived this way, happily, for almost 9 years. A lot of family have helped assist me in this area over the years, and I am very thankful for that.

I am thankful for money. I know. That sounds strange and a little selfish and shallow. But what I mean by that is that I am thankful that Chris has been blessed with a great job that allows us to have money to pay our bills and have a little left over for fun things. We have been blessed tremendously over the years in this area. We have had tough times. We have made big mistakes, but we've learned from them. Money is not our top priority. We live a little bit simpler and I wouldn't have it any other way. We sacrifice more money for being able to spend more time with our kids, eachother, for not having to send our kids away to daycare every day so we can keep getting further in debt on "wants" and miss out on what's really important. We have no reason to complain. I have no reason to complain.

I know this blog post could go on and on and you're probably already losing interest. But I had all of these thoughts spinning around in my head and as I sat down and started typing this, one thought turned into another and it just kept going. I am going to try to be more thankful. I am going to try to find the good and thankful things in every situation in life and not just focus on the bad. I am going to try to be the-glass-is-half-full person. I am going to try to remember to thank God more for all the blessings in my life and not make every time I talk to Him be about what I want.

So, are you truly thankful? I challenge you, along with me, to try to think of one thankful and positive thing every day. Especially when it looks like there isn't one. Try really hard - I bet there is one if we look hard enough.

Please leave me a comment and share with me what you are thankful for.

Hope this has encouraged you and "thank you" for listening. :)