Gratitude. It means to be grateful.
This is something that I don’t think I can ever get tired talking about because it is one of the very core of who I am.
I am somebody who believes that being thankful should be a constant state that anyone should be in. Being thankful that you’re alive. Being thankful for the people that surround you. Being thankful for everything happening each day.
But one thing that I learned is that even though I’m the kind of person that is always conscious of that attitude of gratitude, the kind of person that I always want to see the positive in things and be thankful for those things, I realize that once in a while I do feel frustrated. I actually get sidetracked by the things that are happening in my life.
The truth about us being humans, especially Christians, is that we should never lose sight of being grateful at any point in time. Lately, like three months ago, this was something that I had to remind myself again because there was just so much going on in my life. It wasn’t like anything bad was happening per se. It was just that the thing that I wanted the most wasn’t happening at that time. And because I was so focused on what I didn’t have, it almost made me lose sight of the things that were happening. The things that I didn’t even pray for but yet they were happening. The favor that I was experiencing. The new levels I was attaining.
I was so blinded by that one thing that I didn’t have that I forgot all about it.
And one of the things that made it very easy for me to be like that is because I felt that what I was missing was very important. I knew that it was something that God was actually going to have me do. It was something that He was leading me to do. So, the fact that I didn’t have it, or that I wasn’t at that stage where I possessed it, it just made me feel like I wasn’t doing something right. Maybe I wasn’t praying well enough. Maybe I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to.
I was so hung up on what seems like a deficit. I just somehow didn’t see all the things that are being added on to me. And that just made me want to write about that stage of being grateful today. Because, fortunately for me, I just got called back one way or the other into that consciousness, into the things that were happening alongside what I wanted that I didn’t have.
I genuinely shifted my mind from the missing piece back to the things that God has done for me. I thank Him, I praise Him, I worship Him for it, for the things that I have had. And I was in such a state of gratitude that I was for the one that I was yet to have, because I know it was only a matter of time before I have it.
I can say with pride now that that was the missing ingredient. That was what God wanted me to understand, that He wasn’t ready to give me something if I was going to be focused on what was missing. I mean there were other things and factors in place for that, but the most important thing was because my heart was focused on what I didn’t have, I was missing out on the good things, but also it was preventing me from getting that which I did want. So it was like I was stuck in some sort of limbo.
Now that that has happened, I’m just really grateful. And each day I try to be very conscious about it. It is not just the routine, “thank you God’, that everyone does at the beginning of prayer. It is that actual meditation on the things that God has done.
I just want to say that if you look closely, you will find at least 10 reasons to be grateful today. So how about you think on that? I know that we all want things, we’re always chasing after goals. I still have a bunch of things on my list that I want to achieve this month and this year that I haven’t gotten to. But I would not let that hold me back from actually being grateful for that which God has given me.
So yeah, that’s my little nugget for today. And I hope that that puts you in a place where you are aware of the things that you do have as opposed to the things that you don’t.
With that being said,
Remember to spread Nothing but love this week, and keep reaching for the stars.
