I’ve been writing down blessings every day since January 31, 2014. I’ve filled numerous small spiral bound notebooks and as I recorded them each night before bed, I smiled to remember the blessings.
Some days I found myself struggling for something new to write, but would finally get it. And then the next day I would consciously look around, saying to myself, “Oh, I can use THAT tonight in my blessings book.”
The years have continued. The notebooks have accumulated.
And today I just got a new idea for that practice. It was Elizabeth Sherrill’s writing in the January 1, 2003 Daily Guideposts. (I don’t always use the correct year.)
She suggested that sometimes you look around and see what you’ve begun to take for granted, and don’t even think of as a blessing.
I immediately can look around the room I’m in and see so many things: the marquetry picture that hangs above my desk of a lakeside cabin with a sailboat on the lake; the new gnome on my desk that I just got for Christmas; my life-like sea otter puppet which has sparked many conversations when I take her into meetings or to the post office.
In the kitchen, my refrigerator; my stove which produced wonderful oatmeal cookies last week; ordinary things which I take for granted and are still absolute blessings in my life.
I have found that writing down blessings helps me open my eyes and see in a new way.
