A friend of mine gave me a small gratitude journal for Christmas 2016. It arrived later than she hoped and when she finally received it, she told me that it wasn’t exactly what she thought it would be, but she gave it to me anyway.
Between the delay in shipping and my delay in deciding how I wanted to approach this, I began using the journal at the beginning of February 2017.
I finished filling up the book this past Saturday, October 20, 2018.
As you know, I journal consistently. I have all of my journals dating back to when I was 8 years old. Some years they are notebooks that skip long stretches of time, but since about the end of high school, I have been more committed to writing each day. I rarely miss a day.
As with any play I am in, half of my house seems to get moved to the theatre during the production. While getting things gathered up for transport, I end up cleaning and rearranging things to account for missing furniture and accessories. A couple of weeks ago I was doing just that when I came across the journal from my freshman year in college at the University of Alabama back in the fall of 1975.
It was eye opening to read how I have changed and frightening to see ways that I haven’t. It was a really difficult time for me and sometimes I question my own memories of the things that happened during that year. Reading what I wrote as it happened made me feel more confident that my memories, painful though they are, are accurate.
Knowing that I had this blog as well as my daily journal beside my bed that I write in each night before sleep, I wasn’t sure how to approach this new gratitude journal. I decided to write one thing each day that I was grateful for. But in order to make it more interesting, it had to be something new each day. I could never repeat the same thing twice- EVER.
It is easy to be grateful for a spouse, a child, a friend, a house, your car. The first few entries are typical. After you have hit all of the obvious things, then what do you write down?
I found this to be challenging and thought provoking.
On those days that I was not in a great mood, I found it hard to be grateful for anything other than the basics, which I had already added to my journal. Having to take a minute and really think about all that there is to be grateful for made the experience more rewarding. I wrote down gratitude for my feet, for green leafy vegetables and for umbrellas. I thought about being grateful for the ability to drive, for time alone, for theatre. I mentioned gratitude for a warm coat, my washer and dryer, my breath and hard work.
As often happens, the sermon yesterday coincided with what is happening in my life- this time it was the final entry in my gratitude journal. The sermon was about gratitude.
When the minister mentioned the Jewish tradition of finding 100 things to be grateful for every day, my quest of one unique thing each day seemed like joke. I did good to find that one thing some days, how would I ever find 100!?!
Gratitude is like most good things in life- the more you do them, the easier it becomes. At first I would sit and think about what to write. After all of the usual things, I would have those days that I was stumped. But as time passed, I would have multiple things I wanted to write and had to pick only one. I would hope that the next day I would remember some of those ideas, just in case I had a bad day and got stumped again.
Now I see blessings all around and I am grateful in my heart whether I write it down or not. I was able to understand when the projection at church said “A Gratitude That Never Changes”-gratitude at all times for everything, even if I still have tough days when it is hard to remember.
I am not sure what my friend was expecting when she ordered this journal for me. I have found that having a beautiful book filled with mostly blank pages was just what I needed to see everything more clearly, to see the pages fill slowly with all of the people, ideas, and things that make my life so rich.
Just as love grows the more you share it, gratitude grows the more you think about it. And each time you feel that gratitude, I think you are automatically praying.
Someone told me one time when I mentioned being unsure if I was praying correctly, that if all I said was “thank you”, that would be prayer enough. Each time I think about the wonderful things in this life, I just say “thank you.”
And I feel most days that is enough.
So many little things get past us. We are busy, bombarded with emails, text messages, tweets and phone calls. We plunge through each day trying to do more than we did the day before. We forget to look at the details and we certainly don’t have time to say thank you for every little thing we come in contact with during our day.
Taking time each night to think through my day, deciding on one detail that I am grateful for and saying thank you has been a true gift. That little book may not have been what my friend expected, but it was what I needed.
So for that I say thank you, I am grateful.
