I decided to hold off until the last day of the month to play catch up on my gratitude. I hope you find reasons to be grateful every day, not just every day of November.
Reading Gratitude
While the scriptures contain the books that most affect my life and I love reading them and learning from them, I also love reading a wide variety of books. Cozy mysteries are fun when I don’t feel like really focusing. In depth fantasy and science fiction novels tend to give my brain a workout. And who doesn’t love a book that teaches them things. My husband can vouch for my love of books, since I keep suggesting he build me more bookshelves and he knows I am not really joking. Also, some of those children’s books bring me just as much joy as they bring the children…
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Teach Me to Give Thanks
I tried to write out a quick homage to all the teachers I appreciated as a child, which just made me realize I was a teacher's pet, probably much to their surprise since one brother was a class clown and the other I refer to as a discipline problem, so I shall try to be brief as I list teachers/principals/professors who encouraged me.
I have had many teachers who saw my potential and encouraged me to reach for the stars even when other people told me I would never reach them. My first first grade teacher, Mrs. Knotts, saw that I wasn’t learning much from her and transferred me to another class for the remainder of the year, so my mind could be challenged. I had a teacher named Miss Bryan in grade school who always made me feel respected and loved (and introduced me to peanut butter blossoms). And of course, my grade school librarian Mrs. Royce and her assistant Mrs. Sylva made my day by letting me help shelve books before school started each day. In grade school, I was such a good teacher’s pet that both the principal and vice principal took notice of my extreme nerdiness. One of them let me have some retired English books and the other specifically asked for me when one of my classes arranged for children to shadow important people in the community (seven years later). He was the mayor at the time.
I even had a math teacher in middle school who surprised me by realizing how bored I was in his class (because I was in the wrong the class) and made sure I got into the correct class the following year. Mr. Rollyson may have been influenced by the time he made me redo a problem so many times that erasing wore a hole through the page before realizing he had the wrong answer himself. And Mrs. Curry introduced me to the joys of sentence diagraming…
Mrs. Colebank gave me a deeper understanding of how to diagram sentences the following year and put up my my constant questions. I also got encouragement from my creative writing teacher and my high school French teacher, Mademoiselle Mays. And pretty much every language and linguistic teacher I had in college inspired me in some way. I even had a professor, who started curving the class grades to the second highest scores because my nerdy little heart and brain excelled in that particular class and it didn’t reflect well on a fair number of my classmates. In another class, the professor and I seemed to be having a book club because we were the only two who always read the material before class started. One girl even commented that she was taking notes on what we were discussing. I could detail how awesome a lot more teachers and professors were, but I know you have leftover pie to eat.
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Body of Gratitude
We should all be grateful for these amazing bodies we have been blessed with. In particular, I am grateful my body cooperated in making two beautiful little girls. It may have tried to kill me a couple of times along the way, but my girls are healthy and beautiful and extremely sassy. I think I have myself to blame for that last one.
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Achieving Gratitude
I am not sure I have achieved anything notable this year. As a stay at home mom of two adorable toddlers, I achieve the same goals over and over. I wash the laundry, fold it, and put it away. I cook the food, make sure everyone gets some, and then clean the dishes and put away the leftovers. Tiny but meaningful achievements.
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Talent of Gratitude
My top three talents, at least as far as my brain is concerned today are:
1. Baking. If you really know me, I have probably offered you baked goods. If you were lucky, they featured flavors you like. Apparently, not everyone likes coconut. Who knew?
2. Making people smile. Honestly, I question this one, but I have had more than one friend tell me how I brightened their day or how calming my voice is (not what you want to hear when you friend is driving you through downtown Baltimore).
3. Staying entertained. I once had a boss comment gratefully that he loved how he could assign me any tedious task and I would be excited about it. Apparently, having a brain wired like mine has its advantages.
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Finally Grateful
I was challenged to ponder what goals the gratitude challenge has caused me to set for myself, and I came up with this:
Apparently, I need to work on finding inner peace, making more time for me, and probably thinning out my interests, so I can focus on the important things in life...like pie...
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