Thankfulness Thursday I

It's that time of year again!

Gratitude is something that we all could be better about practicing year round, but we're all reminded of it a bit more around Thanksgiving. Three years ago, in 2015, I decided to put a particular emphasis on taking note of everything that I have to be thankful for by starting a Thankfulness Thursday series here on Totally Graced for the month of November. The posts were simple, just short lists of things that I was thankful for over the course of the week. Since then, Thankfulness Thursday has become an annual tradition, with bloggers from all over the world joining in each November. The posts vary from incredible stories of God's goodness to mere sentences, the kind that are all you can choke out when your brain is spinning in a thousand directions. At the core, however, they all share the same message- on the good days and the bad, the easy and the hard, there is always something to be grateful for. 

I'm really excited to jump into the fourth year of Thankfulness Thursday! The beautiful Vanessa of Simply Me has already come on board to participate alongside me this month, and I would love for you to join in as well. You don't have to post every week, and it doesn't have to be long or complicated. You can even join in on social media if you prefer. Thankfulness Thursday is just a great way to celebrate all that we have to be thankful for, no matter how you decide to join in. Everyone seems to be super stressed out in November, whether that's due to the impending holiday season, finals, NaNoWriMo, or just the general pressures of life. I've found that doing Thankfulness Thursday posts is a great way to refocus myself each week and remind myself that amidst the crazy, everything's going to be okay. 

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There are so many things that I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for the fact that I have incredible people in my life, a job that I love, and access to anything that I could possibly need. I'm thankful for rest and for adventures, for dancing and for peace.

But something in particular that I've been thinking through lately the fact that I'm grateful that I'm not the one in control. 

Hear me out. I am a control freak. I've long since accepted this about myself. I'm about as Type A as you can get. Lists calm me. I don't like surprises. I'm most comfortable when I feel like I have a steady grip on everything around me. I realized a long time ago that, in one way or another, all of the things in life that freak me out the most involve some aspect of a loss of being in control.

And yet, I've been realizing lately that I am so grateful that I'm not. 

October was a strange month. There were multiple situations that took place that didn't work out at all how I would have necessarily hoped, and definitely not how I would have chosen had I been able to change things. I'm a bit of a verbal processor at times, and often when I'm in the car alone for long periods of time, I find myself working the things that have been spinning in my brain out aloud, asking God to make sense of them, to help me understand. And as I was doing this one morning, the thought flew into my head, clear as day- "Why am I upset over this when God's the one in control, not me? Why would I want to be the one in control here? Doesn't He know so much more than I do? He has it all worked out. Why am I even hesitating to be okay with that?" 

When something doesn't work out the way that we might have liked, what if we didn't take it as such a negative thing? What if we realized that maybe our own plans weren't quite so perfect after all?

So lately, something that I've been adding to my chats with Jesus is, "Thank You so much that You're the one in control and I'm not." Because that's something to be grateful for. I can't even imagine what a mess it would be if we were the ones running the show. 

Amidst a thousand other things, this Thursday, I'm thankful that I'm not the one in control.

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Thankfulness Thursday Friends ♥

Vanessa -- Simply Me

(Leave me a comment or shoot me an email if you join in and I'll link your post here! Let's share the gratitude this November. )

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How's life going, friends? What are you thankful for?