Leading & Loving Your Family
- So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. – 2 Corinthians 4:18 NLT
Have you felt like you’re going in circles? Did the last year put you through the wringer emotionally, mentally, physically? Sometimes it’s all we can do just to get through the day. It’s this feeling that can have in a routine or a cycle that is hard to break out of.
There is an art to being thankful. Look around yourself and you can see it. Look at the people around us at work, driving in the car, and on any social media platform and you will see how much everything revolves around the individual.
The dictionary defines being thankful as expressing gratitude. There is an art to being thankful. A better way to phrase that is to say that there is a heart needed to be thankful. What was the last time that you felt someone gave you a sincere apology?
Being thankful can be hard. When I recognized in myself that I may attempt to be thankful but it doesn’t always come across how I intended. To help myself at trying to be a better communicator, specifically in text messages, I made one change.
If someone I was able to help someone with something then instead of saying “no problem, ” or using a thumbs up emoji, I started responding with “you’re welcome.”
This may not seem like a big change but it accomplishing a couple of things. Saying “you’re welcome,” helps me and the other person on the receiving end. I get to develop humility and instead of acting like I did them a favor I can acknowledge it, and they can feel my appreciation.
From this example I hope that you can see that being thankful is all about your heart.
Thanksgiving is right around the corner. This is supposed to be the time of year when we are supposed to be more thankful.
This is the perfect reason to begin to put some things into practice develop a heart of thankfulness.
It’s important to start your day with this. If the first thing that you do when you wake up is check your phone for emails or facebook then you place your feelings, and more importantly your mind starts racing.
Praying and meditating is great because it is a part of the self care that you need. It’s going to help you stay grounded and centered for your day. Before you jump into other people’s problems, you must be at peace.
Most of the time we don’t say the full thank you. We’ll shorten it and say thanks, or just nod. You might even do a thumbs up emoji. While those short cuts may be efficient they are not effective at helping us have a thankful heart.
So let’s develop the habit of saying the full thank you when someone helps us. If just for a second it puts you in the frame of mind where you fully think through what they did to be a blessing to you.
If you want to be thankful then help someone else. Set out to start doing random acts of kindness. Don’t worry about how other people receive the acts. Sometimes we can fall into that trap. Where we do something nice and then wait for the acknowledgement or praise of doing the nice act.
Don’t do the acts for the praise or acknowledgement, do it for the reason that you want to do something from your heart.
How do you say Thank You?
Dates got you to a place where you wanted to marry each other if you want to stay married then keep dating your spouse – Andy Traub
Do you remember the first date that you and your spouse went on? What about the first time you met? Okay, that might be stretching your memory a little bit. Have you heard the term dating in marriage? Maybe not, but there is a concept here that we need to take more seriously. Our marriages are valuable and we don’t take care of them in the same manner that we take care of other things that we value.
I was recently with a group of other couples, It was our church’s marriage ministry, Rings and Things, and we all went around and tried to answer the questions that were asked at the beginning. One of the questions was where was your first date with your spouse? I did pretty good and was able to recall our first date. Having everyone trying to remember provided good laughs and an enjoyable evening. This question rolled in my mind and had me thinking of why we should continue to date in marriage.
Why should you continue to date throughout your marriage? There are many reasons why you should.
It should be obvious that communication is the key to marriage. While we know that it’s clear, sometimes we forget or negate it. We all know what bad communication is, and how it makes us feel. What dating does is put you in situations where communication is safe and fun. We need to have more of those opportunities in our marriage.
Date nights are great for helping us to create new experiences in our relationships. It’s easy to fall into the mundane ruts of life. These experiences help to create fun memories that you will cherish later on.
The spark and novelty of date nights contribute to the romantic love aspect of relationships and can make you feel like you’ve just started dating each other all over again. Who doesn’t want to feel those butterflies you felt when you first started dating? Planning consistent dates with your husband or wife will help you fall in love with each other all over again week after week.
By opening up to each other on dates, spouses build strong bonds that solidify their commitment to each other. This is important for the inevitable hard times that hit us all. When either of you are at your low point, will you have each other to pull you back up? How strong is your emotional bond with each other? If it needs some improvement, then odds are you aren’t dating each other enough.
Life and the business of life often get in the way of planning intentional dates with your spouse. When this happens dinner and a movie is usually the default date. Not that dinner and a movie is bad but it can get stale if this is the only thing that we do as a couple. Date nights allow us to break up the repetitive structure.
Why do you enjoy date nights?
