Blessings all mine and ten thousand besides!

I just have to share this, I am sure someone will find this as exciting as me.

Every new year, Matthew and I count our blessings of the year we are leaving / have left behind. This began one year when we felt so despondent about the year we had left behind - bad things had happened in that year. I had the God inspired (I believe) idea to count our blessings from that year, to overwrite the muscle memory of it having been a bad year.

That was a number of years ago now, and wasn't intended to be a tradition, but actually New Year is a time I can find myself lonely, a little lost, and sometimes discontent. But we enjoyed the list so much that year - and it definitely defied our muscle memory - it had actually been a very blessed year. :) We kept the list and have done it ever since.

I caught myself allowing discontent to move in today, actually. Just some stuff I saw on the internet, brought back memories of university, acquaitances gone by, and somehow a regret that my life had not been priviledged in the way others' lives were - those I was 'friends' with, studied with, knew vaguely... and looking in the mirror I just saw someone who had taken a completely different life course and had never had such a 'good' start. But this is where God put me... before I let the thoughts set in (and I'd like to say I had a spiritual moment and took those thoughts captive) I saw one or other (or maybe all) of the Little H's and realised that if I wasn't where I am, I wouldn't have them, and I am incredibly rich and blessed in far better ways than the superficial stuff that got my attention (and threatened my peace) temporarily. Maybe I did take the thoughts captive. But actually I just think the sight of real blessings was a stronger influence.

I had been surfing, anyway, for ideas for Lent. Want to make a Lenten lapbook of some sort, get some good H homeschooly activities underway to observe Lent and give us a kickstart back into how I like our homeschool to look. The Lent work isn't really fixed yet. I will have to do some more work tonight online for that. I have something at least I can do with them tomorrow.

For now, I have come across One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. It is very much like the New Year idea. Except it has a nice cover and a lot of followers!!!! ;)

Here are 2 you tube links of an interview with Ann Voskamp that is really inspiring and encouraging. Time to begin counting our blessings and getting to a thousand. To begin with...

Anway, our plans for Lent won't be that ambitious. But this morning I was going to read the scripture for the day from our calendar, and it was from 2 Corinthians. Little H#1 saw I was going to read from Corinthians and asked for the passage about Love. So I thought it was very appropriate, and changed readings.

My biggest fast for Lent (and something I don't intend to welcome back at the end of the Lenten period) is fasting negativity. Negative thoughts, and words. So appropriate today for that to have come from Little H#1's chosen reading. I will not keep a record of wrongs. This will be a bigger contribution to our family life than many other things I can think of for Lent.

So I will keep a record of Blessings instead. I feel happier calling them blessings rather than Gifts, though maybe they amount to one and the same.

I will attempt to do one with the children too. Maybe they will have a joint list, so that they have a sense of achievement instead of daunting thoughts about a thousand being too many! I think LittleH#1 may well managed doing it by himself in his journal though so I will see how that goes.