Part of the choice to find things to be thankful for is that life sucks sometimes and making your list gets a little harder.  Sometimes a week goes by and all the best laid plans fall to pieces and you miss some showers, raise your voice when you didn’t want to, serve things for dinner that really don’t qualify, miss your hard-working husband like crazy but act like you don’t care since that hurts less and say goodbye to pets that you adore because for this little season their home can’t be with you…yes, some weeks and truly some whole months or years burst with hard things and seem to never end.

But part of the beauty of gratitude is still writing your list when you’ve cried every day for a week and you don’t feel like the list could be worth writing…

#226 – friends who help carry the load when you can’t

#227 – being a receiver of generous compassion

#228 – sharing real life with my children, even when life doesn’t feel nice

#229 – clean sheets

#230 – what a $25 gallon of paint can do to a little kitchen in 4 hours

#231 – hearing a two year old try to say “Guatemala” over and over

#232 – hearing her older sibling pray on her behalf for her new Compassion child

#233 – spontaneous fun

#234 – sacrifice-in all its incomprehensible beauty

#235 – the mystery of homeopathy and the difference it can make in the life of a child

#236 – warm feet on a rainy day