Two Minutes a Day

I've been having a devil of a time sleeping. There doesn't seem to be any more on my mind than usual, so maybe it's a lack of a routine to tucker me out. Reading doesn't help, milk and cookies, and some nights, not even Melatonin.

About a year ago, I began practicing (exercising?) active gratefulness before I got up in the morning. If the first step to changing a world is changing your thinking, it was worth 2 minutes a day. I began counting my blessings, out loud and purposefully.

I'm not saying some mornings I didn't struggle to find just one thing that was good, like when Bursitis and Sciatica made it hard to get out of bed. But I enjoyed the time and so did God. As I practiced gratefulness, blessings began to spring up throughout the day and I looked forward to sharing them during our little chats. I found them everywhere.

And then an interesting thing happened. Somehow, my life started to intersect with other people who live the same way. In demonstrating generosity a conversation would inevitably draw us together and would end in how they practice gratefulness. After that, I became much better at recognizing it in the motivations of others and what those unexpected kind words and deeds really mean. And then miraculous big events started to happen, like our tenant friends who found a wonderful replacement to rent the house so we wouldn't lose rent or an Innkeeper that made our wedding dreams come true on a measley budget.

I know blessings are hard to see. Real hardships are out there, scary and real. But believe in them and look for them and you will see God's hopeful promise in them that life will rebound. Even when the unimaginable happened last year and we lost our granddaughter, the pro side of the Blessings Ledger stepped up to help bolster us as we withstood losing what was most precious.

A great investment in just two minutes a day.