I apologize for last week’s post. I was in a mood. But for the record, the issues I raised are all real. I just didn’t need to present them in that exact way.
This week we are turning 180 degrees and talking about gratitude.
“Practicing gratitude” became fashionable during COVID. It seemed like every celebrity was talking about their gratitude journals. I even audited a class from Yale in 2020 about happiness and it turned out that the true secret to happiness is- guess what- practicing gratitude.
So why am I talking about it 4 years later?
Because I was reminded about this practice- and its power- yesterday at Hosanna Lutheran church in Mankato MN. We were there to celebrate the baptism of my cousin’s baby girl and the sermon was the 4th in a series about becoming a mature Christian. And it was about thankfulness- aka gratitude. Maybe it was the music or the pastor or just the work of the Holy Spirit, or all of the above, but the message spoke to me. It reminded me- especially given last week’s post- that I do really and truly have so much to be grateful for.
I don’t know that I’m going to dig out my old gratitude journal (yes I had one too) again. But I do have an app on my phone (Finch) that includes an activity to list things you are thankful for and I am going to turn that on. Because, no matter how overhyped it was in 2020, practicing gratitude does in fact actually work.