31 Days of Gratitude

Friends to dream with – gift.

Last week I posted about dreaming big, God-sized dreams.  God gave me a dream, a ‘little’ dream that my sweet roommate is helping me make a reality.

It is called 31 days of gratitude.  Counting gifts, things I am thankful for, has been a life changing practice for me over the past few years.  Inspired by One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, I learned how to change my perspective on life by looking for the blessings and treasures throughout the day rather than focusing on all the things that go wrong.  One of my soul-friends and I started a JOY journal where we counted gifts and mailed it back and forth to each other throughout our college years. (Now we get to exchange it in person since we both live in Colorado, which is just another blessing to add to the list.)

So I was journaling the other day, February 21, to be exact, and was just feeling a little frustrated and pessimistic.  So I turned to a new page and starting listing things that had brought JOY to my life recently.

And I got to 21 things I was thankful for, and a thought popped into my head, “What if…What if we had to come up with the amount of things we are thankful for to match the date of that day?”

I quickly texted my JOY-friend and suggested it…could we do it? Man, by the end of the month you’d be counting a lot of gifts. But that’s not a bad thing.

And like great friends do, she responded with energetic agreement: “I LOVE IT”

And then I mentioned it to my roomie who quickly said, “I can make that for you, no problem!”
We make a good team.  Because dreams are better when dreamt together, and so here it is: 31 days of gratitude.

Starting March 1^st. It starts out so easy; can you think of just one thing you are thankful for? And then it will progress, each day adding to the list. But it will train us to be looking for the gifts each day, so that by the end of it you’ll be able to list 31 gifts no problem…and you will have a JOY-ful heart and a list of 496 things you were blessed by in the month of March.

Cool, right?!?!? (Might as well round up to 500…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves)

It all starts with a thank you.  A shift in the lens you see the world through; all it takes is looking for the gifts.  Think of it as a day long treasure hunt.

Please consider joining us.  All it takes is a printer, a pen, and a willing heart.

We have it made in a PDF so all you need to do is print it out and start counting tomorrow! The link is below!! (Also, for the JOY of journeying together - why not share on social media? #31daysofgratitude)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5431kdM7EQKRlc5VzNqdzVGVWs/edit?usp=sharing