Changed.

Well my goodness.... it's almost halfway into November and I never really capped off my experiment from last month. It's something I've been meaning to get to for.... well, for 13 days now. Is anyone still following along? Not that you need to, this has been mostly for me. Just wondering :)

Before I end that, I need to just say how incredibly grateful I am for this girl:

She is such. a blessing to me. We've had the chance to get closer the last little while and I am just so grateful to have her with me right now.

Okay. On to the experiment finish: It was grand. It was amazing. Seriously? It was. I don't mean to be overly dramatic but.... it changed my life. I am not even kidding. And I learned something (shocking of course). My difficulty that I always had with ever thinking about trying to do this gratitude thing or being more grateful is that I knew that I'd be happier if I did it, but it felt like just one more thing to do. I was overwhelmed, plain and simple. And it seemed like it would be me working at being happy--you can't be happy unless you are finding all the little things to appreciate and focusing on them and thats what makes you happy when you're grateful. Overwhelming! Well that is entirely a false notion of my little natural man brain. Let me tell you what actually happens:

You are blessed. It's as simple as that. Because you are taking even the smallest amount of time to return thanks to our Father, He blesses you for that. So the happiness comes not from the work that you are doing... but the fact that He pours out His spirit and blessings and heaps them upon your head. And He gives you the gift of happiness and peace and literally, I had an extra spring to my step. The whole world looks different. And you start to find even more and more things to be grateful for, like the green light you just went through when you're late to work, or the fact that you looked up in time to see the brake lights in time to stop, or that lunch was served at work on the day you didn't have time to bring some, or that you have cute shoes on that day so you feel prettier, or someone at work said, hey you do a great job at what you do. So, so, so many opportunities for gratitude, and you feel so humbled and then you know what? He blesses you more. He heaps more goodness upon you and its this amazing circle of incredible goodness in your life. And then another good thing, you feel closer to Him (because you're talking to Him all the time and you aren't just saying 'oh goodness, help me with this and with this and with this' you're saying 'hey! thanks for that, oh and for that and for that and for that). It keeps Him more on your mind. I don't mean to be on a soapbox here but I seriously feel like this has been a magic pill in my life. And I never felt like my life was particularly difficult or painful or anything before, I was doing fine. But this just lit up my life, kinda rocked my world. So, ready? I challenge you. Yes I just said those missionary words: I challenge you to try it. Just give it a whirl. What do you have to lose? Even if it doesn't absolutely change your whole world, it will change you as a person and change your relationship with God.  He is so good. And I love Him. You don't have to blog every day, just keep a notebook with you and stop to write a few things down during the day. Or I saw someone on facebook the other day made a 'gratitude tree' for Thanksgiving (they had the base of the tree taped to their wall and then wrote their blessings on leaves and taped it to the wall) and add a leaf every day. Or make a 'Thanksgiving List' like my family does only add to it every day, instead of just thinking of all the blessings you can at once (all though thats cool too...I'm just going for the importance of the day-to-day thing here). Keep it simple or you won't do it, so do it. Tis the season after all. :)

Although my "Experiment" is officially over, I still plan to post here occasionally and I want to find other ways of showing my gratitude to my Father in Heaven. We'll see what else is out there!