Sometimes this online community just blows my mind. I can be sitting in my little world in Austin, Texas and Liz Scanlon’s blog gets delivered to my RSS feeds and I read about someone I don’t know doing a month of Gratitude posts for the last month of the year and I think, “Hey, I’d like to do that too.” Suddenly this stranger and I are connected through gratitude.
Come on, doesn’t that blow your mind a little with a bit of coincidental coolness?
The Gratitude posts began with Jote Khalsa and she welcomes all to join her month in any way they want: from reading to praying to thinking to writing.
I would like to join on Sundays and revel in the previous week’s moments when I found myself stunned by gratitude.
So I begin.
Wednesday, December 1-My daughter and I open the first gift on the advent calendar that sister #2 sent us for Christmas. It is such a thoughtful gift and it so cool that we will open one gift a day, thinking of her, thinking of us, thinking of her, thinking of us…
Thursday, December 2-My daughter shadows at a potential high school and I am stunned by her poise and her intelligence and I am oh so grateful for her presence in my life. (I am also a little blown by how quickly this journey has passed. Weren’t we just checking out preschools?)
Friday, December 3-I receive a text from sister #1 that her chemotherapy cocktail is working and the tumor is shrinking. Oh the relief…
Saturday, December 4-My neighbors bring home their brand new baby boy. Oh my heavens, his fingers, his fingers, his perfect exquisite fingers….they wrapped around my heart.
This past Thanksgiving I drove from Dallas to Abilene to see my 87 year old father. During the drive I happened to hear a radio broadcast by Dennis Prager, one of the national radio talk show hosts. He was talking about the importance of holidays and keeping them important. He said that, as a Jew, he felt remembering the holidays and keeping them important was a major reason in the Jewish people being able to survive without losing their heritage and identity. Then he said that he taught the first five books of the Old Testament in his community. He said those first five books are very clear that it is absolutely ok with God for us to argue or fight with Him, but the one thing that really ticked God off was our ingratitude. He stressed how key gratitude is for all of us. He said for him personally Thanksgiving is a more important and vital holiday than the Fourth of July. I could not agree more. So I was delighted to see your
blog about gratitude.
I am also very happy to see the joy you have with your daughter. You bring great joy to so many others as your blogs show.
I hope your home is always filled with gratitude and love. You are loved by many.
Merry Christmas,
Jack
Thank you, Jack, for your thoughts. It is so lovely to know you are out there zooming along the highways (red porsche?) thinking great thoughts.
Be well,
Lindsey
Oh, yea!!! I’m so glad you’re doing this, Lindsey…
Me too. Thanks for inspiring me.