The One Where I {link up) for Five Minute Friday - Grateful

If you've heard me say it once  you've heard me say it forty times: #1000gifts.

Take the joy dare. 

Slow down to see the miracles. Because there's a little something special in every day.

I've written my three things sporadically over the past eight months, started on my birthday.  At first I wrote them faithfully, but then I didn't do it as often.  But I do it.  Every month is new I start up again.  :)

Here is a spattering of my #1000gifts

1. Life
2. Birthdays
3. Health
4. Pumpkin Lattes
5. Cake
6. Rain
7. End of Summer
8. Dishes
9. Laundry
10. Ezra 4

100. Fire
101. Burning Desire
102. Burned Dinner
103. Burning Bush
104. Sun
105. Muscles
106. Shared
107. Saved
108. Surrendered
109. Sweet Sweat
110. Leave It On The Pavement
I stopped counting in my journal and began on Instagram.  I really need to go back to the journal....

Three Things Hard:
Trust
Submission
Acceptance

Three Things Rising Up:
1. The sun with new mercy
2. The sun with new mercy
3. The sun with new mercy

Three gifts Stacked, Stashed, Stilled:
1. Dishes put away by the teenager
2. Chocolate
3. Quiet house in the morning... to go with my coffee

It's hard for me be to grateful, it really is.  Isn't that the jest of the garden.... of original sin..... ingratitude.  I'm ungrateful, for the smallest things... for the people around me who I love and adore (but they get on my nerves),  the fridge full of food (yet I can't find anything to eat), the music blasting on my stereo (and with Sirius XM, there's nothing good to listen to).

Todays Prompt Is: Three Gifts In The Dark

1. Sleep.  Must.Have.More! Yet grateful for good night's sleep!
2. RRC Track Workout.  I get up at 4AM to run in the dark on Tuesday.  I'm grateful for my running club that offers this kind of workout for my very low membership fee!
3. Stars.  You can't see stars unless it's dark.  There's beauty in that, both when you're looking and the stars and when it's dark in your life.  Look to the Morning Star! 

I've got to get better:  In counting my blessings. (and I don't mean stuff)In getting to 1000 gifts.  In slowing down to see the miracle.  So many things can go wrong in the course of a day, a week, a month... a life....  So many things that really in the scheme of things don't really matter.  What I was upset about last month, who can remember?  What about last year at this time?  Who knows? 

It's time to slow down to see the miracle, choose joy, pass joy onto others, teach our children to live with gratitude, not entitlement.  It starts with us.  It starts with me, the ungrateful.