ThanksLiving: Feeding the Fire

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope your day was filled with blessings, good food, and family and friends.

This Thanksgiving I've made a vow to live with thanks in my life. As wonderful as it is to give thanks and be grateful one day a year, it is much more meaningful to live a life full of thanks.

Each day this month on Facebook I have said something I was grateful for. It's amazing how much this simple activity forced me to own the blessings in my life. It's easy to let life's challenges get us down.

I plan to continue this daily thankfulness from now to next Thanksgiving and see how it impacts my life. No, I won't fill up everyone's FB Newsfeed. I bought a journal for my daily thanks.

This last year has had many ups and downs for me, and many of those are continuing. My life is in quite a state of flux right now. My husband is in between jobs, and my middle daughter is facing a lot of challenges with her EE diagnosis. But I've found it's easy to let stress and fear rule the day.

And I've never appreciated EASY. I always tell my children that anything worth doing, worth having in your life, shouldn't be easy. If it's easy, we take it for granted and never truly appreciate it. Don't get me wrong, things worth doing shouldn't feel impossible... just challenging.

Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for all the people in my life. I truly believe there is a reason for every person who enters our lives. Sometimes that person causes pain, but we learn from it. Other times, they bring happiness that makes us grow. But I'm most grateful for people who inspire my self-discovery.

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. Albert Schweitzer

A special thanks to each and every one of you who light my inner fire. Without you, I'd be a dim bulb flickering.

What are you grateful for today?