“Do you know how lucky you are?
How fortunate?
How blessed?
Do you know how incredibly good you’ve got it?”

Those words rang through my mind as I traversed the roads, curvy and double lined paved strips of asphalt, familiar to me. I’d been to the library where I borrowed a book or two to read, free of charge pending I don’t lose it and return it on time. While there my kiddos placed folded pieces of paper with a name of their choosing in a box labeled “name the Guinea Pig” I am fairly certain Gerard was at the top of the list of names they’d narrowed down for the recently acquired library mascots. After the library I was heading to the pool with my children, all nearly grown, yet they did not shrink away from me or avoid spending time with me. Not as often as I thought they would at this age anyway.

Do you know how blessed you are despite living in a tumultuous time, adversity at multiple turns, pestilence and affliction, despite circumstances that would declare otherwise?
Do you know that you have breath in your lungs and Spirit in your body?
Do you know how blessed you are?

The thoughts were somewhat foreign to me as I struggle sometimes to have a good attitude.

I am a glass half empty-pessimist most days kind of gal. Truth is negativity comes easier to me than positivity. I find it most ironic that my blood type is actually B-positive. It is as if the Good Lord Himself needed to infuse me with the reminder to be positive from 120 days post birth when total red blood cell type conversion took place. Up until then I carried within my veins my Mama’s O positive blood type and I reckon the Lord also knew I needed to be rapidly transfused with that B-positive blood type because I was a jaundiced little gold nugget for quite some time, or so I am told and photos indicate, as I have no recollective memory of it. I digress.

I once went to a conference and a speaker spent an hour telling everyone how to be happy. She ended her talk with a statement backed by her research regarding happiness.

She said, “Research shows that the happiest people are not necessarily the wealthiest people, the people who have the most material things, the people who have climbed the corporate ladder. Those are the very people I would think are the happiest. Research has shown the happiest people are the grateful people. The ones who spend their lives being thankful.”

I smiled as I immediately remembered the favorite Madame Blueberry episode of VeggieTales that I had nearly memorized by heart as it played on repeat as my children were growing up. Madame Blueberry had discovered that all the things from Stuff-Mart couldn’t make her happy but that a happy-heart is a thankful-heart.

I try and remember that on the days I do not feel overwhelmed with joy is it because I am not overwhelmed with gratitude. The King’s word says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Don’t get me wrong I have yet to get it right and my grateful days could stand to be increased in quota but the King’s word is true, and I can trust the key to happiness is stamped with the word “Grateful.”