Thankful Thursdays

I’ve been wanting to start a weekly column for quite some time. I especially wanted it to be spiritually (or at least edifyingly, which incidentally is not showing up as a word in my spell check) focused, because I know that I tend to be much more lighthearted in my day to day blog.

I realized today that the perfect column would be a weekly thankfulness post. The reason that I want to highlight thankfulness is that it is a very important practice to me as I try very hard to watch what I dwell on, and to only focus on the positives. I daresay that I am better about staying positive on my blog than I am in real life, but I do try. If I do just feel the need to be negative, I try and wait until I can also blog about how God spoke to me through the negative situation (example here). I don’t always succeed by far, but it’s a goal.

I sometimes fear that people may get on my blog and be disgusted because it’s so positive – the “oh. She’s got the perfect life” syndrome. That is certainly not the case. I just try not to focus on the negatives. Not that I’m not being real, I just believe that the majority of my view on life has to do with my thoughts about life, and if I choose to think and rethink about the negatives, I will have a negative life. I blogged on this a couple of months ago here.

So, all that to say, I want to start a Thankful Thursday weekly column, and you can participate too!!

There are two ways for you to participate:

1. Blog Participants: If you are a blogger, you can use the Mr. Linky tool that will be at the bottom of the column each week. You write a post on your blog, then copy and paste the URL to that post (not just the URL to your blog in general) in the column labeled “Your URL”, and type your name or the name of your blog in the first column, labeled “Your Name”. I doubt I have many, if any, full participants to start, because that’s asking a lot for you to write a blog related to my theme, but I think it is a worthwhile theme, so I hope I find a few people that want to join me in focusing on thankfulness every now and then.

2. Comment Participants: If you don’t have a blog or don’t want to devote a post to your thankful item, please leave a comment for what you are thankful for this week!

I think that to start with, I am going to center my thankfulness posts around why I am thankful for the age that Ali is at currently. I’ll probably do a different thankfulness post every now and then, but in general I want to get into this habit while it is easy to see the positives so that hopefully I will keep that habit up when she starts to get into the 2’s (of which she is already giving us THANKFULLY rare and short previews of). I want to be able to identify the positives at every age, even if they are usually preceded by the word “terrible”!!! However, your thankfulness posts and comments are welcome to be about anything in the world that you are thankful for!!!

Please let me know if you have any questions, and I hope you join me in this fun endeavor!

My Thankful item for this week is in the post below this one, which is what gave me the idea. I am thankful that Ali is at an age where she can communicate what is wrong, but is not so emotionally driven that it upsets her. It’s a wonderful in-between age!!

If you want to write a post, please link it in using Mr. Linky, or if not, please feel free to leave a comment with your thankful item of the week!!!