This post is my personal reminder to remember to be grateful.  Gratitude doesn’t plant the roses, but it triggers an appreciation in me that reminds me to slow down to enjoy their beauty and fragrance.  This post is here to remind myself to slow down to enjoy the blessings around me… especially those blessings that come disguised as problems.

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I catch myself complaining about blessings all the time.  

Yes, I complain about blessings.  You probably do, too.  It looks something like this:

“I bought so many groceries that they won’t fit in the…”  freezer/pantry/etc…

“We have so many…” (books, CDs, movies, collectibles,…) “that they won’t fit here anymore.  Where are we going to put them?”

“The air conditioning at work is too cold.”

Or my personal favorite blessed complaint:

“The (fill in the blank) is not working!”  For us, this is usually internet or computers.

In order for something to be broken, it must first exist… and was probably working.

What a blessing!  The fact that you owned it in the first place is a blessing.

The computer that is giving us fits right now once worked beautifully.  It transported our little home to the far reaches of the world connecting us to people and information that generations before us only dreamed of reaching.  Forget generations past!  There are people living today who can only dream of someday getting to use a computer.  We own our own computer in our own home.  What a blessing!

Me and my first world problems!

I have actually struck gold on a super deal at the grocery store and bought so much that I struggled to find room in the freezer or pantry to store it.  I even grumbled about it… until I caught myself.  How dare I gripe about having too much food!!!!

We all seem to do it.  We complain about eating too much.  Poor unfortunate gluttons who have made ourselves miserably uncomfortable by over indulging.  How many people in the world would trade our worst days for their best?

Just a little perspective!

How truly blessed… and utterly spoiled rotten… are we that so many of our complaints and problems are really blessings.  I don’t think that possessions or freezers full of food are bad.  I don’t think they make us bad people to own them.  Quite the opposite.  I just think we all need to spend a little more time recognizing the blessing behind the problem.

Gratitude is recognizing that we are a blessed people.  You are reading this on the internet therefore you are blessed.  You are reading therefore you are blessed.  Recognition of blessings comes before gratitude.

I hope to begin to recognize more and more blessings in my life.  I want to see all the flowers and not just the biggest and brightest.  I hope to become better at controlling my tongue.  I want to spend less time complaining and more time enjoying the blessing behind the complaint.  I want to remember to thank God for all of my blessed problems.