A Time to Count Your Blessings

I’m about to board a bus to upstate New York for the Thanksgiving holiday. I just spent several days in New York City after traveling across country from California. This is the one time of the year when my whole family gets together. It’s our family reunion–and not always a pleasant one. Not everyone gets along. Not everyone likes each other. My mother is getting old and is more than a bit crotchety and cranky.

Yet, I consider the trip one that I must make each year–and that my husband and children must as well. My family is small. My father died when I was seven. Who knows how many years my mother has left to live. I only have two sisters (and a few relatives in Israel).  This family reunion is a time for me to remember the gift of family–even if it doesn’t always feel like a gift.

And this year I am spending it with my two children who now live away from home in New York City. I am grateful to have the holiday to relax and enjoy their company. (I just spent a few days in the city where I had a chance to be with them a bit as well.)

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I find this a time to count my blessings–the blessing of family, first and foremost. I also feel blessed to have the ability to travel across the country from California to see my children and the rest of my immediate family. And I feel blessed and grateful that I can still visit my mother and see my sisters and their families.

In general, I am grateful, and I appreciate that Thanksgiving offers the opportunity to move out of the nasty habit that I, and so many other people I know, have of feeling ungrateful. Instead, we spend some time focusing on gratitude. On thanksgiving. We think about all the large and small things for which we feel grateful.

I was once taught that gratitude is the most powerful prayer one can say. I believe that. Feeling blessed is an expression of gratitude, and in the Jewish tradition we are told to say one hundred blessings a day. Why? So we focus on gratitude…on feeling blessed. Typically, we bless God–an odd thing to do, I suppose. We say, “Blessed are you, God…for the sunset, the food I’m going to eat, my health, my family, this holiday, etc.” We thank God for the wonders we receive. We say, “I’m so blessed to have received this…”

I used to keep a gratitude journal. Every night I wrote down a minimum of five things for which I felt grateful. This practice did not make me feel grateful all day, but it did keep gratitude in my consciousness more often and it made me count my blessings at least once a day.

We don’t have to celebrate Thanksgiving to count our blessings, but it’s a wonderful opportunity to do so. I find that I don’t do so often enough. What about you? Do you count your blessings on a regular basis? If so, how or when? I’d love for you to share with me by leaving a comment.

Happy thanks-giving!