Give Thanks

Happy Thanksgiving

A Devotional by Margot Cioccio
   

1 Chronicles 16:34

Give thanks to the LORD, 

for he is good; 

his love endures forever.

Happy Thanksgiving for those of you who are reading this post on Thursday!
I'm a little late posting it - what can I say I've been trying to maintain a stress free kitchen. I've only had to kick my husband out once for going off on the dogs.  Its no wonder we do this meal only once a year. Its amazing how much prep work is involved in the traditional American Thanksgiving meal. Potatioes to peal, turkey to stuff, cranberries to cook, green bean cassarole to mix together. I think I've been in the kitchen since about 9am and its now noon and I am finally back to my computer to try and get this post written. Everything is prepped at this point and just needs to go in at the propper intervals to get cooked on time. In general I have tried to keep things pretty low key. Family memebers have all helped in various ways through out the moring to the back drop of the Macy's parade.

Our day will include playing some of our favorite games. I think we watched more movies than humanly possible yesterday but I was glad for old familar favorites that I could sleep through part of the movie and still know what was going on. I just needed to veg a bit yesterday.  I'm still a bit tired and I know I have been pushing myself to much in the past few months and will need to find some ways to find a more reasonable pace. Some things are done, I finished my coaching training, I will keep writing daily posts but I'm not too worried about actually hitting the 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month. It will be interesting to see how many words I did manage. The Public Market,  I had thought I would try to be there every week through the holidays and I think I will scale that back to just one week in December and be there the 15th - 17th. Most of my actual mosaics are listed on my Artfire site for those who want mosaic gifts. I may do some specials that I post on my face book page.  So I am thankful that there are things that I can adjust up or down. I tend to be kind of scattered in my approach to life. It works for me. I have a circle of things that I rotate through. Writing used to be one of those things. This devotional has moved writing to being a everyday thing in my life. Working on mosaics has become a nearly everyday kind of thing. Music is kind of in the background presently, other than keeping up with piano at a kind of minimal level.  Homeschooling is in more of a matinence mode, the kids are pretty much set up to move through thier work on thier own most of the time. Other things move up or down depending on my energy and inspiration level.

I am thankful for the concept of pacing I learned as a cross country runner while in highschool. Learning to pace yourself has a lot to do with actually making it to the end of the race.  There are times that you have to slow things down a bit and other times when you need to run hard. I've been running pretty hard and I need to slow that pace down for a bit. Even when I slow things down I don't ever loose site of the goals that I am reaching for. Its important to keep moving in the right direction and not get off track chasing rabbit trails that lead to nothing. So I am thankful for lessons learned along the way that I am able to put to use as I continue forward.

It was suggested to me that I did not necessarily need to write long posts every day to accomplish the goal of writing daily for this devotional. Funny the things that can get past me.

I liked this quote by Harvard Professor and author, Shawn Achor

“Countless studies have shown that consistently grateful people are more energetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving and less likely to be depressed, anxious or lonely. 

And it’s not that people are only grateful because they are happier, either; gratitude has proven to be a significant cause of positive outcomes.  When researchers pick random volunteers and train them to be more grateful over a period of a few weeks, they become happier and more optimistic, feel more socially connected, enjoy better quality sleep, and even experience few headaches than control groups." 

So I will encourage you to Give Thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
Take some time to write down a few things each day that you are thankful for this past week or this past year. It really does help you look at other things with a more optimistic outlook.

So I am going to take that advise today, that it is ok to write a shorter post and call this one good.
I wish all of my readers a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy your families or the friends you are spending this day with. I'm off to go enjoy mine. Thanks for reading!!!

Prayer:
Dear Lord, Today and everyday help us to cultivate a heart that is thankful. That we would thank you no only for the obvious blessings in our life but for the hard things that we face and the character that those difficulties are developing in us.