Gratitude...

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. " (Melody Beattie)

This quote keeps coming back to me. It plays in my mind and its truth continues to sink in....I so work to find gratitude as a daily, moment by moment part of my life....and yet I struggle, a battle, with how to embrace gratitude while I define the areas of my life that indeed lack by my own measure....while at the same time knowing so deeply how blessed and fortunate I am each second I breathe....

I believe the life God has for us involves a lot more of God and a lot less of us. Our ambitions, our desire for power, wealth, for control, all take us further from that which God created us for...humility, obedience, loving others, sharing, caring for what God puts before us...

I struggle daily, weekly, with my own ideas of what and who I should be...of my shortcomings, failings and lack of progress to be the person I thought I would become...

and then

I ponder the scale that Christ measures me by and once again realize that most if not all that I mourn about who I try so hard to become so often overcomes becoming what God built me to be...

and each day I work on listening more and talking less.