gratitude wall

For a few years, I kept a gratitude journal.  It was a spiritual disciple as I trained myself to see beauty in discouraging circumstances and identify God's good gifts on a daily basis.  My list lengthened.  Soon I had listed over 1000 things that I was grateful for.  Slowly I fell out of the habit of writing them down.  Life got busy and my writing time grew slimmer.

Then I started noticing how much I was bothered by negative people who couldn't find anything nice to say, but instead focused on criticisms.  Let's be honest:  it's a slippery slope before we're all there.  When I said that gratitude was a spiritual discipline for me, I really meant it.  I have to practice it or I'll never learn.

I decided to transform my gratitude journal into a gratitude wall.  This was it was visible and communal.  We set aside a little wall in our kitchen where we write down our "grateful for's" (as we call them) on sticky notes and are working on covering the wall.  As we fill the space, we are making a visible testimony to God's goodness and reminding ourselves of what He's done.  I can't wait until our son is older and he can participate too.