Gratitude In Season and Out {Dayspring Giveaway}
Living a life of thanksgiving is a conscious practice. It’s something that requires effort, holding your tongue, and replacing discontent thoughts with those of gratitude for being given much more than deserved. It’s an ongoing process, not just a season. 
To see the blessings in disguise…
To find the joy in the tears…
To trust in the One who has a plan in it all…
To embrace chaos…
To realize there is something much bigger than my self…
To love when it doesn’t come easily…
To count it all joy when faced with trials…
To trust Him at His Word…
It’s something I desperately want to live out in front of my family.
Because one of the best things about joy and thankfulness is their contagiousness.
This black wooden pedestal is a great visual reminder from Dayspring. And they have some more lovely reminders for your home or for gifts in their clearance section currently. {I spied several great gifts for $4.99!}
AND if you’d like $50 to spend courtesy of Dayspring, tell me how you choose gratitude in your daily life in the comment section. I’ll pick one commenter in the next 48 hours, and contact the winner via email.
{Thank you to Dayspring for sending me this black pedestal to facilitate this giveaway. This posts contains affiliate links.}
This summer we lost our little baby Eleanna. Instead of choosing to turn away from God due to spite. We praised and thanked him for allowing us to have and love Eleanna. She made us parents, and after 5 years of infertility to know we had a child even if she was in heaven was a great gift.
Everyday we are so grateful for so many things that it’s easy to live a life of Gratitude.
I like to take some quiet time and reflect on all that I have.
my 2nd baby is 10 days old, and I find nursing to be a great time to pray for him and my daughter and be so thankful for my beautiful children. There’s a lot of nursing time these days, so it works out well. 🙂
I like to thank God for my blessings when I write in my journal.
I work as a special education teacher and find myself often thinking about how grateful I am for the life I have. I didn’t do anything to deserve the parents I was given, or the situation I grew up in. I try to show my gratitude for the life I was blessed with by showering my kids at school with love, affection, attention, and whatever else they need.
I love this time of year! I give thanks for my family and so much more!
Pollyanna was one of my favorite movies growing up and the “Glad Game” has always stuck with me. I play it with my kids now and it helps us to remember everything we have to be glad and thankful about.
I’m constantly reminded on a daily basis how great our God is. I’ve had an extremely difficult week with my daughter being in the hospital. This morning while driving into work, I was listening to the Smiley Morning Show. They are currently doing their make a wish request a thon. I couldn’t help but start crying and thank my lucky stars how grateful I am for my kiddos and all the blessings God has granted me. All too often I lose track of what is important and don’t take the time to thank God for His amazing grace.
I keep a little black moleskin notebook in my purse and try to write down my gifts as they come to mind.
Lovely giveaway, Thanks Jen!
I’m grateful for every second I get to spend w/ my boys…I’m reminded of all of God’s blessings each time I look at them.
I’ve been keeping a list since middle school of “things that make me smile” AKA what I’m grateful for. It’s been fun to watch myself grow up through the list. It started out with things like “notes in my locker,” “getting the exact class schedule I wanted,” and “FIRST KISS!!!” and now is things like, “The smell of a baby’s head,” “Watching my husband come out of the airplane,” and “New nieces and nephews.”
I have to take some quiet time each day to remember my blessings, or life gets in the way.
When my now 13 month old was a newborn, she would go days without…a #2 and it worried me to pieces. So, now I “appreciate” dirty diapers and am grateful for her functioning body!
I am thankful for my family and especially my husband. He was in a bad motorcycle accident in June and I about lost him. Thanks to the prayers of many people and the great nurses at the hospital that he was in for over 2 weeks, he is healthy and strong today. It has been a year of MANY blessings for us.
I try and count my blessings every night when I’m trying to go to sleep. I have never been able to get to the end of the list though – isn’t our God wonderful?
Every morning when I walk into my son’s room and realize the mountains God moved to allow me that precious opportunity to say “good morning baby!”, I choose gratitude. May I never forget!
We keep a gratitude jar on our dining room table and watch for ways to give thanks throughout the day.
i lost my 1st son unexpectdly at the age of 14 months and i watched my 2nd son struggle for life after being born 11 weeks early. now, as a mom of 3 toddlers my days can get crazy. when my boys are going wild and i feel like i am loosing my mind i stop and thank god for my wild and crazy boys because even if my days are crazy i know how blessed i am.
What an awesome giveaway – my girls are my inspiration, I love the excitement they see in the little things (and hope to learn to join in more often). My youngest just yesterday was so excited, the jumping up and down kind, when “daddy’s cup” came out of the dishwasher and was dry. It did nothing to thrill me as I was just putting away the dishes, but to her it was pure joy. I can see why Jesus uses the example of faith like a child so many time – they truly see things differently!
i’m thankful even for the “back-talk” from my 3 and 4-yr-olds (trust me…we’re working on it) because that means my late-talkers are FINALLY TALKING.
I’m grateful for friends. We are always out of town for the holidays and don’t get to see our friends, so we have a special adult dinner planned for this evening. Yay!
I hug my baby when she’s cranky and give thanks for her.
This is something I’ve been trying to be better about doing… being thankful in everything. Sometimes it is so hard. It’s almost “automatic” to complain or think of ways you would have had things go differently. But especially when I’m driving (alone) and it’s quiet, I try to look around at all that God has created and thank Him for the many, many gifts in my life.
I try to focus on the positive (especially try not to whine in/on places like FB), and give thanks throughout the day instead of just morning, night, and meal times.
In an effort to help me remember to pray for different people, I pair their situation with a daily task. So, when I’m nursing my little one, I pray for my friend who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. When I’m washing dishes (a job I hate), I pray for my friends who are currently unemployed and desperately need work. When I’m changing diapers, particularly the ones that make me want to puke, I pray for my friends who have for years been trying to add to their families. I started doing this so I would have set times to pray for different friends, but gratitude has been an amazing by-product. Gratitude for what God has given me and for the amazing ways he answers prayers.
Lately, I’ve really been focusing on the small things in life, and being grateful for those. Because the more I give thanks for things like food, or a car that starts, or warm mittens, then my whole attitude begins to change, and I see those things aren’t small: they’re blessings.
I find gratitude in the daily mistakes that I make. For without them how would I learn. When I learn by my own mistakes and transgressions it is only then that I am able to teach others not to do the same.
Mel4Him777{at}gmail{dot}com
I choose to not let the little things get to me.
My husband and I have been married for 36 years and for 36 years have been in the ministry. Either as my husband pastoring small churches, serving at a very small Bible College and now back at a small but growing church. We have chosen to have an attitude of gratitude. We know that we would never have been able to provide for our family without God blessing us. We don’t always have everything we want but we have everything we need. God is so good to us.
On my drive to school with my 14 and half year old son, we always talk about being thankful, and how much the Good Lord has gave us. Sometime we get off track,but it always come back to counting our blessing name them 1 by 1,, Count your many blessings and see what God has done.. God is so good…
Currently going through James MacDonald’s “Lord Change My Attitude Study” along with 31 Days of Praise and realizing how self-centered I have become despite being a part of a family of six! It’s back to basics for me, right now, just being able to thank Him for basic provisions, for my precious family, and for not giving up on me despite my continued failures!
Everyday I am blessed by seeing the patients that we treat with radiation for cancer @ St. Vincent Hospital. So many of them keep smiling and stay positive throughout their treatment even when they feel so bad. Don’ t take life for granted, things can change in one day. Life is precious so be grateful for what you have. Keep things in perspective, your troubles aren’t as bad as you think they are. God gave us the gift life so be grateful and live each day go the fullest.
After reading Ann’s 1000 gifts book, I try to spend parts of my day counting gifts, those things which I am thankful for! The days that go by without counting gifts are the roughest and I find myself with a very poor attitude. Gratitude leads to joy in my life!
Remembering the promises of God are true…He is Provider, Comforter, Lover, Grace-Giver, The One Who Gives and the One Who takes away.
at the end of each day I try to write down what I was thankful for, and then look back over it at the beginning of the next day
I teach preschool and I find when I spend most of my time talking about how thankful I am for each of my kids and their special talents, the more they choose to show their sweet side. It also helps me to keep my patience when I am surrounded by 10 crazy 4 year olds if I try to remember how awesome it is that their parents trust me to mold their minds.
It is the small things that I am the most grateful for. The smiles, hugs, quiet time spent together on a lazy Saturday morning, etc. Life is a blessing and it is too busy to let the “big things” be consuming all the time.
I read my Bible and pray everyday….I am so thankful for my family and friends,also my husband has a full time job with benefits
thanks for the giveaway
I used to try to rush through putting my kids to bed so that I could have some much needed “me” time but now I use those moments to be grateful for them! We spend time sharing what made us happy, sad, and mad that day and then we laugh together as a family on my son’s bed. We share our prayer requests which mostly turn into praising God and my heart is so at peace in those moments!
My 6-year-old has spent the past 4 1/2 years battling and chronic kidney disease. In spite of constant illnesses and daily medicine that has some yucky side effects, she enjoys each moment to the best! It’s watching her love even the smallest thing that makes me realize how how graeful I am to live the live I live and be surrounded by the ones who love me!
My mom has been in the nursing home for five years since a very debilitating stroke. Dad joined her there two years ago. I have been struggling with going there to visit. Then I think that I am blessed to still have them. The visit Wed. was a nice one.
I am trying to take a moment each day to remind myself of the incredible blessing of my children, and to thank God for them.
I choose gratitude by daily choosing to love those who are deemed “unlovable.” Being a nurse can be hard work!
It’s the simpliest things in life that I am most thankful for. Always remember to say thank you – even when you feel most rushed.
Thanks for a great give-away!
I choose gratitude in the many many many questions that my 3 little ones ask me every day about EVERY thing. Because I know one day I will have 3 teenagers and there will be a lot less questions and more silence. Doing my best to soak it all in!
I choose gratitude in my daily life through the hugs and kisses I pour upon my children and husband. My way of thanking God so much for giving them to me and what a blessing they are to me. Also my way of thanking them and God for their forgiveness, for all the times I’ve yelled at my kids or been selfish in my time with them.
At the end of every day, I take a moment before going to sleep to think about all the blessings in our life and to praise God. Even those tiring, long, stressful days with a four year old.
I just posted about this today—about how the things I’m most thankful for are also the things that drive me the most crazy. But when I stop in the middle of the aggravation and verbally give thanks, it changes things.
I’d love to have some more physical reminders in my home!
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I make sure I thank God each morning before my feet touch the ground and then I continue all day and write the items down in my journal!
I choose gratitude by looking for the heart behind my children’s “problem” behaviors…it makes me remember that there is a little person in there, growing and figuring things out. I am so thankful for each of them!