Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Learning to Count Your Blessings in the Moments They Occur

My wife has been keeping a blessing journal on her blog for the past few years. (Mama De Hotel) Each weekend, she reflects on the week and writes about the blessings she received during that time. It’s been amazing and inspiring to see how doing that regularly actually has changed her outlook and perspective DURING the week – since she is thinking about and recognizing blessings AS they happen, not just in hindsight. She is gaining a “blessed disposition” (a "blessings orientation", if you will).

Until her experience, I’d never realized fully how counting your blessings in retrospect as a practice leads to counting your blessings as a habit, which leads to seeing your blessings in real time as an orientation / disposition.  I highly recommend my wife's path for anyone who struggles to recognize blessings as they occur.  It didn't happen overnight for her, but it is happening as she continues to endure to the end - and it has begun to change the very definition of "endure" for her.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sometimes wonder if 'learning to count our blessings'really means actually learning to enjoy them.
As a mother to three seriously ill children who may never recover, I have often felt abandoned. I try to find evidence of God's love for all His children in the very small things of life as I've been waiting for miracles for seventeen years now.I try hard to rejoice in sight, sound, smell and touch. The coming of night and the cool of morning. I have been given these things without asking for them, and so I try hard to rejoice in being in that moment, cool grass beneath my feet and the quenching of thirst.These gifts save my soul.

Papa D said...

Thank you for your comment, Anonymous. It is beautiful.