The Beauty and Blessings in Your Life

It’s amazing how overloaded and busy your life can get, and, if you’re not careful, it can be sneakily easy to miss the beauty and blessings in your life. As we began and continued our journey to eat and live healthier, it became easier to see the very real connections between thoughts, perspective, and health. Discovering the connections between need to reconsider your priorities or maybe it’s more of a becoming aware of a perspective that you hadn’t realized needed to be considered. For this reason, I hope this post will be a helpful reminder of the importance of gratitude and encouragement, to draw you back into noticing and resting in the many, many blessings in your life to rejuvenate you and to fill you with peace, joy, and hope.

Take Time to Slow Down

As my pastor suggested in church this morning, start by taking a moment to breathe in a deep, lung-filling breath. Realize and appreciate the air that you were just able to breathe in and out, the lungs that took in the air, and the benefits you receive from breathing that air. While you are simply breathing, a slow and strategic breath can help you slow down, reduce anxiety, and have more clarity.

Go ahead and breathe in another breath.

While you and I really didn’t do anything to earn or create that air or those lungs, we have a great Creator that gave us lungs and air, along with these amazing bodies that use that air to keep us alive.

What beautiful gifts that you and I have both been given.

Take Time to Notice

There’s Sooo much to celebrate every day, so much that can lift us up, but with busier and busier schedules, the good stuff can get crowded out or we’re moving too fast and too frantically to see it. To explain what I mean, here are a few examples of what you might be missing and ways to take time to notice:

• slow down your pace periodically to see the beauty around you,
• think about the transportation options you utilize regularly that make your life easier,
• notice the birds singing, the rustling of the trees and other sounds that you can hear,
• think about what all goes into your ability to walk, write, see, etc. and how amazing it is,
• notice the colors, smells, and flavors that are part of your daily meals,
• notice and appreciate noticing someone being kind,
• enjoy and return kindness to a devoted dog,
• remember special memories with loved ones,
• receive/give a heartfelt hug,
• notice your strength in the midst of challenges,
• enjoy an inspirational conversation with an elderly neighbor
• select and enjoy uplifting music that makes you smile,
• take in and remember a word of encouragement received,
• stop and enjoy to beauty and aroma of a flower or herb,
• experience the peace and blessing of silence.

Of course, this list can keep on growing and growing, and I’m sure you can probably come up with even more opportunities for gratefulness and encouragement that are unique to you and your day.

Eyes to See

There’s just so much we are each surrounded by, have experienced, or are in the midst of that can fill us with gratefulness and encourage us to smile, but those can often be missed when focused on phone screens, overloaded schedules, competing chatter and discussions, and more.

But you have to have eyes to see the blessings around you.

Don’t miss them, because of the busy-ness or the challenges that you might be facing. Don’t rush through your day, always thinking about what’s next on your list, and miss seeing the blessings of your life. Pay attention to the gifts in your every day.

Live your life in a way that supports your health by seeing the blessings of your life and be encouraged.

My Gratitude and Encouragement

It’s time for another deep, life-filling breath.

Over the past few years, I have lost several close relatives and even a devoted dog (just a few weeks ago). While each loss has brought on all that comes with grief, they’ve also brought up  beautiful memories

Pause for just a moment and let me say…

I’m so grateful you stopped for a moment to read this post, and I hope you have a beautiful day filled with many blessings, big and small.

Remember to look up to your Creator for your hope and future. And remember to pause and really be in the midst of gratitude and encouragement for all the blessings in your life and around you.