*image photo credit kateausburn

“We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.”
― Neal A. Maxwell

Can I tell you a secret? I’ve tried to count my blessing. I’ve purchased beautiful journals and wonderful books, joined Twitter parties and blog challenges, downloaded apps and committed to an accountability partner. But I never stick with it very long. The minute the journal is hidden under a pile of laundry, or the accountability takes a break, or the chaos of life returns - I’m done. I stop looking, stop counting, stop writing it down.

This season of Thanksgiving, I want to do something differently. I don’t want to get excited to count my blessings or buy a new gratitude journal that will end up in a drawer before the New Year has started. I want to take my blessings and make them count - not leave them hidden away in an app or shortened to 140 characters with a creative hashtag. This year I want to make a conscious effort to do more with what God has given me, and to pay forward the ways in which others have poured into my life over the last 11 months.

• I want to surprise friends with little giftcards to their favorite coffee shop.
• I want to collect the piles of blankets we have stored in closets and donate them to a shelter.
• When a friend sends a text about her nap-hating-child, I want to open my home for a playdate so she can sleep for an hour.
• If someone compliments my Freeset bangles, I want to give them one & tell them about this great organization.
• I want our daughter to help us choose gifts for our Compassion children and to fill shoeboxes for Samaritans Purse.

God is calling me to step away from the writing and move into action, to look around and see, really see, where our family can give back. I’ve seen the blessings poured out over our family in the last year in ways too numerous to count. Now it’s our time to give from grateful hearts because we know. We know what it’s like to need that bit of encouragement, to have someone take action when we need it most. This has been a year of incredible change and challenge for our family, but God used every moment of humbleness and brokenness for His glory. In every moment of fear, He was our strength. In every moment of doubt, He was our assurance. And when the little blessings of comfort showed up in our mailbox, the hands and feet of Jesus in the shape of cards and gifts, we were so grateful for a Father God who takes care of even our smallest heart’s desires.

This season? As we gather together and reflect on all that the year held, I pray that we would show our daughter how blessed we are, but that she would grow up knowing that we are a family who makes our blessing count in the lives of others.