What #GiveThanks Showed Me...

 My wife and I heard the challenge the Friday before Thanksgiving as we drove home from the grocery store. The message was simple, an experiment, really. We were challenged to post things for which we were grateful on social media and use the hashtag GiveThanks with our posts.

There was also a promise. We were told if we accepted and followed through with this challenge, we'd see things in a different light. Since I post at least two things every day on social media, I accepted the challenge. I was happy to do it. For one thing, it gave me seven blog post topics right off the bat (sometimes, coming up with something to write about every day can be a challenge in and of itself...). Now, I had seven posts ready to go...I just had to think of things--and write about things--for which I was thankful.

I wrote seven blog posts. I posted seven PicOfTheDay photos and I used the #GiveThanks hashtag on each. And I'm here to say, President Nelson was 100% right. He nailed it.

There's something I've learned in my many days and years. I remember thinking about photography and writing comic strips. I've tried both. I wondered how photographers could take such amazing pictures form things everyone else sees. They can look at a street, or a hillside, or an animal and see art. Why doesn't everyone see the same things?

I wondered about how people who create successful comic strips come up with their ideas as well. I came to the conclusion, that in both instances, photography and comic strips, the artists have changed the way they see the world. They've trained their brains to see the beauty of the street, hillside, animal. They see the comedy in the mundane and create a comic to tell the story.

What has all this to do with #GiveThanks?

This past week, I was reminded of my thoughts on photography and comic strips because I believe happy people have trained their brains to be grateful. They see the beauty. They recognize the things they've been given and they are thankful. It becomes habit. I found that as I looked for things on which to give thanks, I suddenly saw them everywhere--everywhere I looked, more and more things. I think that's the biggest thing I took away from the challenge.

I wrote in one of my #GiveThanks posts that I could write a post every day on what I'm thankful for and never run out of things to write about. I believe that now more than ever. I loved my week. I loved reading the thousands of other #GiveThanks posts. I hope I can continue to train my brain to look for those things. I want to continue to see things in a different light.

#GiveThanks.

Give Thanks...Day 3--Sundays

 I am thankful for Sundays.

A day of rest.

Today is a great example. I spent the day at home with my family. Normally, I would attend church, but due to circumstances beyond our control, that's a little difficult right now. Thankfully, technology allows us to do the next best thing--attend virtually.

I remember my mother telling me something about my father. He designed, and was in the process of building, our house when he got sick and passed away. She told me, when it came time for us to help build our own house, that they never worked on the house on Sundays.

Since he started the house in 1970 and passed away in 1974, he could have worked an extra two-hundred days on the house...give or take. That's more than half a year. I'm confident in saying that with those days, the house would have been finished by they time he died, leaving his wife and three children under the age of 11 a home that would not need to be worked on later. He chose not to do that.

So did we.

In addition to not working on the house, I tried as best I could not to do any homework for both my degrees on Sundays. Admittedly, I didn't like doing homework any of the other days, either, but making that personal rule allowed me an excuse. 

The earth rotates one turn seven times in a week. To it, Sunday is just another rotation. It's us who give the day its meaning. I'm grateful for Sundays, a day unlike all the others...a day of rest.