A Year of Gratitude – January 14, 2024

Today was a day when I struggled to put my gratitude into words. I woke up and felt off balance. Of course I was grateful to be alive, to be given another day.

I was grateful for my children who were still asleep in their beds. I was grateful for Penny Lane who was settling in on the couch after finishing her breakfast. I was grateful for a cozy home and a warm fire on a wintry morning.

I have come to expect to feel grateful for those things. Not to take them for granted, but you decide that I will be grateful for them each and every day.

Yet I challenge myself to try and find new gratitude each day, to stretch the muscle that finds and makes a gratitude that is unique to that day and name it out loud to remind myself not to stop looking for things large and small to be grateful for.

Today didn’t seem to want to make that easy for me. I went about the chores of my day looking for it. It wasn’t in the attic when I put away the last of our Christmas decorations. It wasn’t in the barn when I went about my farm chores.

And then I found it as a snow squall descended upon us. It was intense and fierce and beautiful all at the same time. It was fascinating to watch as the winds made snowflakes seem to dance in swirls.

I grabbed my coat and phone and headed outside. It looked like a scene from a movie. The wind was brisk and snow piled up quickly on my arms as I held them out to take photos and video.

I came back inside covered in snow, hands cold, face and neck wet from the snowflakes that had been thrashed against my skin by the wind. Yet I felt better than I had all day.

The snow had distracted me from my worries for a moment, seemingly reset the counter on my day to zero. As I changed into dry clothes, I took a deep breath and realized that today’s unique gratitude was the choice to keep looking for new things to be grateful for even when they are elusive.

It is a choice to seek out gratitude. Some people don’t look for it in their daily lives. That’s a choice too. I want to make sure that I don’t make it, that I keep looking. I did today even if I hadn’t realized it until I was standing inside the snow globe that a snow squall brought my way.

I hope that you had a day when gratitude wasn’t elusive and that you found it and celebrated your decision to look for it.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.