Blessings

I sat down this morning to reflect upon the blessings in my life.  This is not a new practice - I am a positive person by nature and know that the richness of my life is a gift of grace.  As an individual, I express thankfulness for my family, friends, job, and home daily (counting my husband twice), and as a family, we are in the practice of giving thanks during mealtime prayers.  The difference in recounting my blessings this morning was that I wrote them down.

The prompting for this form of reflection was a Hallmark ornament sitting on my counter - the Christmas Memory Keeper from 2010.  If you aren’t familiar with it, the ornament is a beautifully decorated cream colored plastic envelope that opens to reveal a package of small, and blank until this morning, cards on which to write your Blessings, Wishes, Hopes and Memories.  Our youngest daughter gave us this ornament last Christmas, and until this morning, it stayed tucked away in its original packaging, waiting for the chance to make it to our tree.

Today is our annual baking day, and I couldn’t sleep past 4:45 this morning.  There is always a lot to do around the holidays, but baking day is particularly busy.  We will have ten kids at our kitchen table decorating Christmas cookies and gingerbread houses for most of the morning and early afternoon.  Later this afternoon, more adults will arrive and (hopefully!) eat all the goodies that were decorated this morning.  There are cookies to make, houses to bake, dishes to clean, etc., in short, my day is full, and the last thing I have time to do is sit down and share my thoughts.

Filling out the little cards in the ornament was more difficult than I had thought it would be.  It’s one thing to offer a quick prayer of thanks, or in my case, count my blessings as I go to sleep, but quite another to list them on paper in a place open for everyone to read.  What goes first?  No question there - Family and the friends whom we can’t tell apart from family.  What comes next?  More thought about what to write, under the time pressures of the day. 

The whole process took me less than ten minutes.  The finished ornament containing a list of what I am thankful for is now on the tree for all to read today and every future Christmas, and I’m sure that this will please our daughter.  Why did it take me a year to finish this?  I think the answer is that the outward expressions of this season, such as baking day, can often crowd out reflection on what is most meaningful.  Today, I am grateful for the chance to sit and think about all I declare to be blessings in my life.  The process has made me look forward to the business of baking day even more.