Keeping a gratitude journal and a thankfulness jar are great ways to count the many blessings in your life.
It’s so easy to get hung up on the rotten things in life: times that you fail, times you’re running late for something, that thoughtless comment that someone made, traffic jams, crummy weather, the dirty dishes that never seem to end….
When we focus on the negative things in life, it’s really easy to get discouraged and frustrated. And it’s so much easier to remember that one thing about your day that went wrong, than to remember the dozens of things that went well.
Keeping a gratitude journal helps to rewire your thinking. It’s a great way to remind yourself of all the blessings in your life, and it’s a great way to retrain your brain to notice all the things that you have to be thankful for.
Adventures in Gratitude Journal-ing
My gratitude journal is just a simple notebook that I made myself from printer paper and card stock. I have been intentionally recording all the things in my life that I have to be thankful for, as well as all the people in my life for whom I am especially grateful.
Over the period of two weeks, I came up with a list of 104 things to be thankful for: 104 things that I encountered in 14 days.
I also compiled a list of 61 people for whom I am especially thankful. Actually…this list was bigger than 61, but I lumped some families together: mom, dad, kids. If I un-lump all those people, I actually have 108 people in my life for whom I am especially thankful.
And that was just a list of people and things that I encountered over 14 days.
One hundred things and one hundred people were bright patches of light and love in my life over a period of 14 days.
And I noticed, as I was keeping track of things for which I am thankful, that those things changed over my two-week period. I started out with the standard things-for-which-I-am-thankful: family, friends, modern medicine, a good job, a warm and dry place to live, indoor plumbing, clean water, and on and on.
But as the days progressed, my sense of gratitude deepened from the big, obvious things to the little joys scattered throughout my day: stove-top popcorn, Vacation Bible School, omelets, sunlight through the window, prayer time with my kids, baking banana bread, morning Bible study….
And I began to remember bigger blessings in my life that had slipped my mind: That time that I scratched someone’s van by accident, left a note with my phone number, got some angry-sounding texts from a frustrated and possibly habitually-angry woman, found out that it would cost potentially thousands of dollars to have the damage fixed, promptly panicked and despaired, and then (miraculously) never heard from her again. I never did have to fix the damage. Maybe she realized that in fact it was an easy fix she could do herself instead of costing me thousands that I didn’t have, or sky-rocketing my insurance. Somehow, God took care of it.
Or that time that one twin was having bad dreams about black holes – dreams where the blacks holes traveled through space and sucked him up. We prayed and asked God to take the nightmares away. We had to pray a few times, a few nights. But than later my little guy reported that the nightmares were gone. He dreamed one night that God came and sucked up all the black holes. Which, of course, He could do because He is bigger and stronger than even the biggest black hole. He’s never had those dreams again.
Those were blessing that were hidden deep in my memory, buried under all the daily tasks I had to do, all the other memories of things that had happened and all the lists of things that I still had to make happen.
And so, I’ve noticed that the things for which I am thankful evolve. They move from the big things that we all have to be thankful for like electricity and religious freedom to the dozens of small things that I encounter throughout my day.
And these small things outnumber all the negativity. These small things, when you stack them up one on top of another, make a tower so big that I can barely see the top.
100 in 14 days. Actually…212 (counting all the things and all the people individually). Carried over the course of 365 days, this habit of thankfulness – of recording all the blessings, big and small, so that they do not slip through the cracks – could create a whole truckload of things that bring joy, joy that overcomes the darkness, bright patches of light on the mediocre days.
How to Keep a Thankfulness Jar
A thankfulness jar is really just that: an empty mason jar that sits in the middle of our dining room table, that we fill with pieces of paper that name things that we’re thankful for.
Each week, we add another thing that we are especially thankful for – something that happened during the week. We will continue to add to our thankfulness jar each week for the whole year. And then at the end of the year, we can dump out our pile of blessings, and be reminded of all the good things that God has placed in our lives over the past 365 days.
Thus far, we’ve each only added 2 things to our thankfulness jar. But this is the beginning of a habit, a habit of focusing on the good, of noticing the big and the small things that bring joy into our lives. A habit of sharing the good in our lives, rather than just complaints. A habit of rejoicing over even the small things. And it’s a habit that we can reinforce as a family. We can raise up our children to notice those places in life where the light of God shines through.
How to keep a thankfulness jar:
- Find a jar – an empty mason jar works well.
- Each week, on a scrap of paper, add something that you were especially thankful for that week. It can be big or small, a family vacation or a warm cup of coffee, a new job or twenty minutes alone with a good book.
- At the end of the year, read about all the blessings that came into your life.
We also did a candy gratitude game with the kids during our small group time this week. They had to name something that they were thankful for based on the colour of the M&M that they chose.