To Live Gratitude is to Touch Heaven

This day we call Thanksgiving started as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and the preceding year which began in the year 1606. As we celebrate today, and being thankful I am reminded of a quote by Johannes A. Gaertner, “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch heaven.”

What a powerful quote where the ending sticks in my brain not to be forgotten. But it the heat of the day, the battle of getting all the things we need to get done, such as shuttling kids around, doing our punchout list after the kids go to bed, getting supper on the table, doing the laundry, making sure kid’s homework gets done, our living with gratitude gets lost in our life shuffle. Then as we approach the Holidays, maybe planning the meal, or packing for travel and making sure everyone has all they need from toothpaste to diapers to a shirt for today, or simply our nerves are high given the social interactions we really don’t want to have, our living with gratitude not only gets lost in the shuffle but buried in the madness of the Holiday Season. It is in these times, we ask you to think about not only speaking of gratitude, nor just enacting gratitude, but living gratitude. In these Holiday Season moments when your anxiety is high, and you are standing at the sink working to just get supper on the table, or you are outside frustrated hanging lights, look to the sky and talk through in your head all the many blessings in your life. Maybe even take the time to sit down and start a “Gratitude List” for something you can always go back to when your attitude gets tested because it is impossible to be hateful when you are grateful. What is it that you can do right now to improve your living with gratitude? What is it that you can do to intentionally live thankful each day? Can you imagine a world in HD in which all people lived thankfully? Can you imagine a world in which all people lived a life in such a way that when we are by ourselves, we all feel good about ourselves?

How awesome is today! Let’s celebrate Thanksgiving every day, not just on the 4rth Thursday of every November. Much like a business, and the Super Bowl, we don’t play for the Super Bowl one day a year, we play for the Super Bowl every day! To whom much is given, much is required. Gratitude is required for us to be the best version of ourselves. Living thankful is required for us to be the best version of ourselves for our family! We have been given sooo much, live thankfully, it is required for your best version of you!!