Joyfully Accepting Grace

Joyfully Accepting Grace... 
If you haven't noticed by now, there's a new title at the top of the page. Not that I think I've outgrown the lesson of giving the Lord control - giving over my throne to Him, per se'... But I have been really focused on learning to accept the grace and mercy the Lord extends every single day. Through that focus, I've been learning a lot about blessings. 

I couldn't even begin to count the number of large, over-the-top blessings that I have received that I do not deserve... I went to a great school, I graduated, I have a job in my field; I have amazing parents and an amazing family, I have two of the best friends a girl could ask for, I just recently started dating a man who is constantly trying to better himself through the Lord... The list could go on. We all have a lot of easy-to-spot blessings. Typically they are things we take for granted... I know that I tend to get caught up in the things I don't have. I'm currently living with my parents, so I get caught up in the fact that I don't have that beautiful apartment all to myself. I get caught up in the fact that I have a 40 minute commute to work. I miss my friends every single day. 

I forget to be grateful I have parents that are not only in a position to allow me to live with them, but they are happy to do it (most days... :p). I sometimes get too caught up in my commute, I forget to be thankful I have a job to commute to (and one that I love!). And I miss my friends - not that it's bad to miss them - but I need to remember to be happy that I have friends to miss... I need to be thankful they have jobs too!

Here recently I "randomly" decided that I was going to write down at least one blessing every single day for a year. Little did I know that an amazing lady already did this - but with three blessings a day. And she never repeated a single one. She even wrote a book about it: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are. And created this simple list of prompts for each day. Things like: 3 Gifts White, 3 Gifts in the Morning, 3 Gifts Said... 

My mom and I are planning on doing this together. We are starting tomorrow - so we have an easy First of The Month Start Date. Here's the interesting thing... I began thinking of several blessings almost a week and a half ago - before I told my mom about my idea and before I found out about the One Thousand Gifts. Since then I have really began to notice the small things that I am truly thankful that I have.

Just this morning I was making coffee and I thought to myself, "How lucky am I that I get to smell this sweet aroma of delicious coffee?" Kind of a simple thing, but imagine for a minute that you didn't have coffee to smell every morning (or maybe it's something besides coffee that helps get you out of bed each morning). 

My whole point of this is to challenge us as Christians to begin looking at the things we do have, rather than the things we don't. The Lord has blessed us beyond our comprehension. But I do believe that if we begin to think about it... We'll maybe be less focused on the troubling times and be more focused on the blessings, the grace, and the mercy we receive every single day. 

Will you go on the One Thousand Gifts journey with us?