Living Gratefully: Day 17

Living Gratefully: Day 17.
–21 Days of Gratitude: Awakening the Heart.

This is a season of looking for the bounty and good in our lives, which creates “a disposition for gratitude and  allows us to see that some of the challenges we face may be blessings in disguise,” as Angeles Arrien writes in Living in Gratitude. (pg. 212)

Is there something in your life that is asking you to see it as a “blessing in disguise,” and by doing so you can live more gratefully?

This question can be a leap of faith! Are we willing to see our life as a journey that we cannot understand all the time?

Can we trust that God is always with us in our lives? Last night I was reading a chapter from Teresa of Avila’s the Interior Castle, and was profoundly struck when she writes that “we shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God.”

Sometimes, we cannot understand the notion of “blessings in disguise,” unless we seek to know the Sacred in our lives. An image I like to use is the one of “putting on the glasses of the God,” which helps us to stop only seeing our lives from our perspective.

Maturing our sense of living gratefully is asking us to expand our sense of ourselves, our lives, and the Sacred, so that we can open our hearts to see the “blessings in disguise,” in our lives.

Gratitude Journal for Day 17:

• Pause. Settle into the moment.
• Open your heart in gratitude.
• List 5 or more moments, experiences, or things you are grateful for today.
• List a blessing in your life.
• Amen
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