Gratitude Community

Is the glass half empty or half full? This is a proverbial question to determine whether you're an optimist or a pessimist. I've always leaned more to half full or as some would say, "a realist." I also struggle with depression and I'm always trying to find ways to prevent depressive symptoms. A friend recently sent me a quote from a John Piper book where he was writing about the life of William Cowper who had suffered from depression. The quote referred to those of us who are given to much introspection and analysis. He says "Periodic self-examination is needed and wise and biblical...mental health is the use of the mind to focus on worthy reality outside ourselves." Piper referred to this as a "healthy gift of self-forgetfulness."
A blog I've been following has a "gratitude community" of bloggers who are blogging a 1000 things they are grateful for. The list is an act of worship to God for the daily graces he gives us. In reading the blog and thinking about it, it seems like a way that I could have some healthy self-forgetfulness. When we spend our mental energies on the many gifts God has given, it keeps us from being focused on our problems, worries, and fears.

And so I decided to join The Gratitude Community.




So here's a few to start my thousand with :

1. God's mercy: Daily I am reminded of God's mercy to me. When I am confronted with my sins each day and see the depths of that sin, I am grieved by how I have treated God. But then He reminds me immediately that His grace is sufficient for me and that Jesus died for each one of my sins; including the times I speak unkindly to my family or when I choose something else over spending quiet time with God.

2. The joy on my son Ian's face every morning when I hand him his soymilk to drink.

3. Coming to the kitchen in the morning and finding little notes my husband left for each of us before leaving for his shift.

3 down 997 to go.