Learning Gratefulness

We have been studying the character quality "Gratefulness".  During the study we have been looking at the different Bible people that have shown Gratefulness or were Grateful, such as Job, when he lost everything, he still praised the Lord and was Grateful.  The definition we are using is: "telling God and others in what ways they have benefited my (our) life".  Makaela and I have been doing some more research and looking into this more for part of our school work.  We looked at how Jesus demonstrate this character quality and how we can learn from that to show others.  Makaela and I have studied how to be grateful to your parents, to your conscience and next we are looking at being grateful to your church elders.  There are other areas to be looked at and I'm not sure how far we will go, but these are just a few of the things we are looking at now.  In this study we have learned how to redirect praise and about smiles: a grateful smile, a obedient smile, a ministry smile and a joyful smile.  Really there is only three types of smiles.  I was teaching Makaela that there are sometimes when we don't feel like smiling, (Obedient Smile) but we smile any way..the scriptures tell us to "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say Rejoice" (Phil. 4:4).   This is something that is easy to say, but hard to do sometimes.   I know that I don't always feel like smiling and I sure don't when things are going haywire, but in order to set a good example for my children, I have to try.

Today as we were looking at being grateful, our booklet suggested a "Gratefulness Journal", so Makaela and I are going to start one.  I want my children to have a heritage to look back on and know that I loved the Lord and them with all I have.