As thanksgiving is today, I thought I would talk about having a true attitude of thankfulness and how that can affect your home's atmosphere.

What does true gratitude look like?

I listened to a podcast by Francie Winslow a while back where she was talking about this topic, and it really struck a chord for me. I realized that so often I was saying oh I'm thankful for this or grateful for that but deep down I didn't actually feel that way about many things. I also realized there were many things I genuinely had gratitude for, but I was not vocalizing that because they weren't the things everyone said I should be grateful for. Here is how you know the difference.

What moved your heart today?

Answer that question and you will know what your truly grateful for. For me, more times than not, it's things like the sun on my face, the sound of my toddler daughter's laughter, the snuggles with my little baby girl, the embrace of my husband, the rain on the windows or the birds flying by. These are things that bring me genuine joy and move my heart and although I am happy to have a washer and dryer and working refrigerator theses don't usually invoke the same feelings deep inside. I think the more we exercise true genuine gratitude though the more we will have those feelings about other things, but I believe this is the place to start.

How does this affect our homes?

I think when we live this out in our lives and teach our children to think and live this way, we will take less for granted, we will focus more on the good and have a more positive outlook on life. If we spend our day looking for the things that move our hearts in a positive way, the bad things won't seem as bad, and the good things will become more noticeable. Think about how that could shift your home? Imagine a home where everyone in it was making a conscious effort to see the things that make them happy and to focus on those things rather than the annoyances and frustrations of the day? This would immensely add to the creating of a sanctuary of peace in your home like I talked about a few posts back (see that post here).

This attitude can also point us back to worship of God because He has given us the things, we are grateful for and also each of these things points to who God is.

Here is an example, if I'm thinking about something that moved my heart, say it's the rain, I would say something like, "thank You Lord for the calming rain, how creative and wise You are to have created an earth that waters itself in this way to grow plants for food for us and the animals to eat. Thank You for being so good that You supply all our needs in this world You have created, I praise You for this good thing!"

Do you see where this could go? I just wrote what came to my mind there as I thought about the rain and the goodness of God behind it and the same thing can happen with anything that we are genuinely grateful for if we give it the chance.

So, I'm going to encourage you this holiday season instead of getting all caught up in the hustle and bustle of shopping and our over commercialized Christmas let's look for ways we can be grateful for the things we have and then in turn praise God for how good He is for those things.

Leave a comment of something you are truly thankful for this thanksgiving I would love to hear what has moved your soul this past week.