Counting Our Blessings and Seeing the Beauty Despite the Messiness and Ugliness of Life (Thanksgiving 2022, Part 2)

The first blog post of Thanksgiving 2022 can be found here:

https://www.journalkeepersd.com/2022/11/how-to-count-our-blessings-in-world-of.html

I will admit, that blog post was hard to write. Talk about something that makes (and made) me very heavy-hearted. I am sure you felt the same way after reading it as well. However, we cannot avoid or deny the yuck, the challenges, and sometimes the ugliness of life. Life is messy. That's a fact. To deny this is to live a lie and deceive ourselves and others.

Life has never been easy. And if it has been, then I question if we are living rightly or the best life possible.

Now, let me make a statement that might seem shocking or confusing at this point:

Life is beautiful.

Yes. Life is beautiful in spite of the messiness of life, and in fact, because of the messiness of life.

We have blessings all around us at all times, in all things. This is true even when we are faced with challenges.

Having and living a blessed life is accomplished through seeing the silver linings in the times of challenge. How do we do that? How do we do that in the midst of so much ugliness and things that weigh us down and hurts us?

Even if we are going through the hardest times of our lives right now (or later), we are still surrounded by blessings. We just might not see or notice them. But as we reflect later, we can see the blessings we had even through the tough times.

I can honestly say that the biggest blessings in my life have been all of the challenges I have lived through and experienced.

How is that even possible? Is it even possible? You might wonder.

The key is to immediately start searching for, looking around for, your blessings today and in this moment. Then, tomorrow, then the day after, and every day after that. Yes, this key of counting blessings now, no matter what is going in our lives or in the lives of others, is to stop and look around for the blessings whether we are in a time of sunshine or storm. For when we do this, we are tuned to the blessings and can see them when the world seems to be falling apart or is frustrating us beyond belief.

Counting our blessings at least once a day, but preferably more, makes it where we can see the times of challenge are not as challenging as they could be. The counting of blessings, after all, gives us a secret power. One of strength. And this strength helps us through the tough stuff of life and still see that in spite of the tough stuff, there is still beauty and goodness (our blessings).

How can we be thankful on November 24, 2022, the official holiday (holy day) of celebrating Thanksgiving in the US?

The answer is simple. Take time in each moment you can today, and every day thereafter, to look around to find the beauty and blessing in the moment in spite of the challenges or difficulty. And count those blessings.

You might even write them in a journal. After all, later when you go through something and find it hard to count the blessings, you can remember the ones you have already counted and fine-tune yourself to see again the blessings and beauty of now.

Life is beautiful.

This moment is beautiful.

Despite the challenges of life.

This life and moment are full of blessing, if only we actively, intentionally (purposefully) look for and count the blessings in this moment, and in the next, each and every day.

We are very blessed.

If we do not think so, it's only because we have failed to stop and count the blessings in the past.

Count your blessings today. For, you are tremendously blessed, even when in the midst of the challenges of life.