By now, if you are like me, you have already lost track of your New Years resolution. Learn Spanish? Who has time for that. But the new year brings a fresh desire to improve ourselves. There is something magical about the idea of a clean slate, and a new start. It brings motivation to be a better person.
I was reflecting on this as I took note of how many days had gone by since the first of 2014. Am I going to let this year slip by me like every year before? No, but I do think I will simplify a bit. You see, my husband and I just returned from a long trip to Africa. How grateful we were to return to the United States, and it all centered on things we take for granted in our day to day lives. I don’t want to lose that level of gratitude now that we have theses things again, so I am going to work on being grateful in 2014. Here is a list of items we were often without while in Africa, that seemed so amazing once we returned.
1. Toilet paper: No, I am serious! When is the last time you thanked The Lord for toilet paper? I doubt most of us even think about toilet paper unless you are the mom of 10 kids. But how miserable we find ourselves if we are without it. The next time you use the stuff, say a little prayer – “thank you Jesus for TP”.
2. Warm water/showers: Ok, how often do we take a shower in warm, clean, water and say “thank you”! “Thank you Jesus for warm showers and most of all that my neighbors have them too!” Really you have no idea how wonderful it is that your neighbors take frequent showers until they don’t.
3. Clean water: We all know that water is essential for all life-plant, animal and human life, but do we ever stop to ponder that? To think about what life would be like if we had to struggle to find clean drinking water? And yet it is the story of life in many parts of the world…
4: Ease of travel: The next time you slip into your well-worn minivan for that family road trip, say “thank you” that you don’t have to travel in it with 20 other strangers packed on top of you – that the road isn’t covered with potholes at times as deep as the car is tall – that the other drivers generally stay in their lanes.
Marc Barnes had a wonderful post about gratitude back in December. In it he sums up what is hard about gratitude “When we really give thanks, we practice detachment from the very thing we have attained, and this hard. We recognize that it is of another, given unto us, not ours except by the will of a gift-giver. We recognize that we don’t really own what we own.”
So this year instead of fretting about what we aren’t doing. Let’s be grateful for what we have. To recognize that everything we have is a gift, even down to a glass of cold water.
