Lauren Denton Headline
A while back, my mom gave me a “grateful journal.” It included five lines for each day, and I was supposed to write five things I was grateful for each day. Many days, it was easy to come up with those five things; other days, it was harder. I distinctly remember a few days where I actually wrote five things I was not grateful for because it felt too hard to come up with the five good things. But for the most part, remembering the good that happened throughout the day was a helpful reminder to dwell on the positive instead of the negative.
These days, I do something similar. Instead of a journal, I use notecards, and I jot down a couple of lines each day about what happened, what we did, whom we did it with. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now, so when I flip to each day’s card, I can see what we did on the same day one and two years ago. It’s fun to see that two years ago I was up feeding my daughter Sela in the middle of the night, one year ago she was “all over the place,” and today she fried my hair dryer. Scary, yes, but we found something to be grateful for even in the midst of the water and dead hair dryer.
My husband Matt walked into the bathroom to find our mischievous two-and-a-half year old standing in the sink with the water running and bubbles filling the sink. (She may have pumped the entire bottle of hand soap down the drain, but at least her hands were clean.) Matt noticed my hair dryer lying on the counter next to the sink. The dryer isn’t usually in the kids’ bathroom, but I’d left it there the night before when I’d dried the kids’ hair before bed. Sela loves to try to plug things in, but thankfully she was too preoccupied with the soap and water to realize the plug and an electric socket were right next to her. What could have involved a trip to Children’s hospital thankfully resulted only in wet PJs and a few soaked towels.
I’m not necessarily a glass-half-empty gal, but I can get in a place where I see the negative before I see the positive and sometimes expect that negative instead of hoping for the positive. In those times, it usually takes someone reminding me to look for that positive, to expect the good, to hope for the glorious. Striving to see the positive in each day, in each moment even, fosters an expectant heart, which we need to deal with the truly negative things we see and hear each day, whether in our own lives or in the lives of those around us. That expectant heart helps us see the good in life and in other people, and it helps remind us that our ultimate hope, our ultimate expectation, is coming, and He will not disappoint.
Lauren can be reached at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com. You can also find her on Twitter @LaurenKDenton.