Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.

-Rumi

Happy Thanksgiving, friends!  This is by far my favorite Thursday of the year as well as one of my absolute favorite holidays.  I savor the vibrant smells and tastes of seasonal comfort foods, the cozy roaring fire that cracks  and burns in the fireplace, and I adore the fact that in this beautiful country of ours, we’ve managed to preserve the fourth Thursday of every November to remember, cherish, and give thanks.

Feast

Many of you are sitting down around a dinner table of some kind with loved ones about to enter into a food coma at it’s finest right about now. Perhaps you’re already there.  I sincerely hope you enjoy every bite and minute of your day.  Some of you are in places of painful or lonely transition and this Thursday looks much different then you’d hoped.  That Norman Rockwell ideal has once again vaporized into a wishful mist.  My heart knows the pain of similar loneliness and I pray you will find some light in the cracks of that thin space today.

Shift

Wherever you are on your journey, I want to give you something to take with you right now, whatever your situation may be.  It can turn the darkest skies a paler grey, shift toxic, negative energy into grounded presence, and it’s available always in every blink, without fail.  It’s completely free of cost.  It is the most powerful force of breakthrough from emotional bleakness into hopeful wonder.  I’m sure you know where I’m going with this—Gratitude.

Why

You’re smart.  I know this because you seek out truth beyond yourself and you invest time and resources into personal development and progress.  Here’s the catch though: smart people ask “why?”  This is not all bad, mind you.  It’s often crucial to know the why’s of our experience.  However, we get stuck when we marinate in our analytical mind, bowing down to the perceived deity of certainty.

Mario Batali

I’m not going to tell you to stop asking “why?”  That’s like asking Mario Batali to retire his orange crocks and go vegan.  Not gonna happen.  Intsead, I’m inviting you to become obsessed with gratitude.  Buy a tiny journal and keep a running list each day of everything you are grateful for from clean water, to another day to explore, to the sound of a child’s innocent laughter off in the distance.  Be specific.  Be relentless.  Be consistent.  Go gangster with it.  Set a timer on your phone several times a day and keep writing them down, the obvious ones and the more obscure ones.  I’m a big fan of the physical act of writing as it sends a message not only to our brains but also our bodies that gratitude is indeed a holy moment, a sacred act of wholehearted living.

Wide open spaces

You are also self aware, thus will soon catch on to the remarkable shift this obsession with gratitude provides, away from the lack of scarcity and into the wide open spaces of graceful possibility.  Your inner dialog will soften, your tired bones relax, and your heart will most definitely open up.

Remember

God did not bring you here to leave you.  Love is much far more clever than that.  God brought you here to lead you steadily, still,  into a powerful redemption story.  This, my lovely friends, is not the end of that story.  Today as we look back and see how far we’ve come, a thankful heart will surely usher us into the forward momentum of that continued provision.

You

So I will start us off right here and now with my deep and stirring gratitude that wells up in my soul and overflows in my heart daily:  I am grateful for you.  I’m grateful for your courage on the journey that’s brought you, in all of your beautiful brokenness, exactly where you are today.   I’m inspired by your uniqueness and blown away that you show up and meet the world’s deep need for gifts and talents that only you can bring.  Thank you for being you, day after day.  Thank you, thank you thank you…

Love,

katie

xoxo