At the beginning of last year I was not very happy. As a matter of fact, I felt I was coming undone. It was during that time that I wrote the post When Mama Needs Help. It was a post about me, but I knew from talking to other parents that I was not alone. Life is messy and hard and brutal. But I also know there is joy and love and beauty.

The year improved, but we were thrown into a season of busy that I have yet to recuperate from. Have you ever felt that way? You look back and the year is a blur leaving you exhausted? This is where I am at. A full summer, an intense surgery for my daughter which required her to be in a body cast for 6 weeks, slow recovery, and the heartache of loss. I told my therapist I’d lost it with my mom last Thanksgiving, and she kindly looked at me and said, “You have held it together for everyone else so long that at some point you were going to experience a let down.” Have I mentioned I love my therapist?

It is ironic that the week after “losing it” I shared at church about Thanksgiving. God knew I needed to focus on that message, because He had a message for me.

The truth is, sometimes life is more than we can handle. Can you be thankful for the tears? Can you be thankful for the trials? Can you feel thankful for the times when you feel like life is spinning? When you feel like you are drowning?

I wonder, if ultimately, we’re asking if God is really good?

We tend to associate God’s goodness with prosperity, healing, and the easy life. But this I know, God’s goodness is not dependent on our circumstances.

“The fact is, until we stop doubting God’s goodness, we can’t experience God’s love.” Joanna Weaver

I know when life is hard is when I need to experience God’s love the most.

“Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.” Psalm 34:8

What I love about that verse is that we experience God’s goodness when we take refuge in Him. We don’t need refuge when life is going well, when we live in prosperity. We need refuge when things around us are falling apart, when we are falling apart.

And you know what is amazing? Some of the greatest blessings in my life have come out of the greatest pain.

And it was then that I decided I wanted to invest in Thankfulness through the storms in my life. My challenge: to make 2016 a year of thankfulness.

Besides, did you know there is actually research behind the idea that grateful people live happier, fuller lives?

“Gratitude is an attitude and way of living that has been shown to have many benefits in terms of health, happiness, satisfaction with life, and the way we relate to others. It goes hand in hand with mindfulness in its focus on the present and appreciation for what we have now, rather than wanting more and more. Feeling and expressing gratitude turns our mental focus to the positive, which compensates for our brains’ natural tendency to focus on threats, worries, and negative aspects of life. As such, gratitude creates positive emotions like joy, love, and contentment which research shows can undo the grip of negative emotions like anxiety. Fostering gratitude can also broaden your thinking, and create positive cycles of thinking and behaving in healthy, positive ways.” Melanie Greenberg PH.D

If you want to learn more about the psychology behind it, you can read the rest of Dr. Greenbergs article HERE.

Now I don’t know about you and your particular circumstances, but I will guess that it is possible all of us need a little bit more thankfulness in our lives.

Will you join me in making 2016 a year of Thankfulness? Every day I will be posting one thing I am thankful for on my Facebook page, and I would love for you to join me. You can post on my page, you can post on your page, you can just get a tin box in your home where you add a slip of paper every day and then read at the end of the year, or you can choose to have a Thankfulness journal where you also write one thing you are thankful for every day.

I want to see God’s goodness and experience His love regardless of my life circumstances. I want to be aware of the many times He is my refuge. I want to see the blessings that pour out to me and my family even when life is more than I can handle. And I want to grab on tight to the joy and love and beauty and to  keep it inside of me as a light for when it feels so dark outside. I want to focus on the good.

Let’s make 2016 a year of Thankfulness, are you in?

We are using the hashtag #yearofthankfulness2016