Day 3: Keep A Gratitude Journal
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Welcome to Day 3 of the 31 Days of Hallway Praise challenge!
Developing a consistent habit of prayer and memorizing Scripture are two great ways to help you as you seek to praise the Lord during hardship.
Another excellent step is to keep a gratitude journal. (You can choose something as fancy as this, or you can do what I did and just grab a $0.50 composition notebook from Wal-Mart.)
I started keeping a gratitude journal for the first time this year, and I've loved it. But I'll be honest: while many days (maybe even most) I find it easy to think of multiple things to be joyful about, there are days where I'm scratching my head, searching for even one thing to be thankful for. But without fail, if I take time to really think through my day, I can find at least one thing to write down.
If you're going through an extremely trying time, the first few days of your gratitude journal might be really, really hard. But if you've eaten that day, you can be thankful for nourishment. If you have a roof over your head - even if it's not your own or even if the bank is threatening to take it away - you can be thankful that you have it today. If you've lost a loved one, you can rejoice that you had the time with your loved one before he passed away.
Start small if you have to. But do start. It may not be easy, but cultivating an attitude of gratitude will go a long way toward helping you choose to praise the Lord no matter what your circumstances are in life.
If you're not in the middle of a trial, this is a great time to get into the habit of writing down things you're grateful for! Chances are good that you'll have more struggles down the road, and if you're already in the practice of looking for the blessings in life, it will help buoy your faith during a later hallway.
If you need more encouragement or just want something uplifting to read, I'd love to introduce you to Laura Coppinger's Gratituesday. She comes up with amazing things to be thankful for!
Today's action steps: Get or create a gratitude journal. You can even start jotting down things on the back of an envelope (I use junk mail envelopes) if you don't have the resources for an actual journal right now - just snip out your words and collect them in a glass jar to read over. You might want to mark down the date for reference. Try to write down at least one thing every day this week!
Linking up at Faith 'N Friends, Grace and Truth, and Sitting Among Friends.
