Last week I was having a conversation with my husband. It was late one night, the kids had gone to bed and Jaret and I got our pens, papers, and calculators out and began to do a budget. We became somewhat sidetracked and began to discuss all the things we wanted to have and wanted to get. The list was something like this: New house, new truck, new motorbike, new tires with rims for car, new deck, new fence, hot tub. I am sure the list could have gone on but that was the jest of it. As we were discussing this we suddenly were becoming very depressed by our money situation and annoyed by the fact that we didn’t have enough money and we needed to make more money. We became more irritated as we talked with each other as well as became resentful of our lives at the moment. The way we were talking was as though we had nothing. We went to bed that night feeling very frustrated and actually bitter towards the situation we were in.

I woke up the next morning and was getting ready for work still feeling very resentful towards our current situation. We weren’t going broke, we weren’t in a bad financial state but it was the fact that we felt we deserved all of these ‘things‘ right now and it was that state that made us feel as though we were broke.

I am really telling on myself now and wish I could have begun writing this post as a story about a “friend” I knew Ha Ha. Even as I write this, I fully realize what a spoiled brat I sounded like. I do believe I needed a good slap. How embarrassing this is even to let you in to a space in my head (heart) that had become quite ugly. Oh well, I continue on.

That morning I was driving to work in vehicle I bought a year ago. I was remembering how happy I was to buy that car. I had previously been driving an SUV that looked nice on the outside but for years I knew that at any given moment it could just fall into a thousand pieces. It felt so unsafe to drive. Then I began to think of where Jaret and I first started out. I drove a crappy car that had more than one problem with it (99 problems and the car had all of them). The windshield wipers didn’t work and in the winter we would have to stop on the side of the highway and throw snow onto the windshield so we could clean it off or in the summer pull over to side of road until the rain subsided just to enough to be barely visible enough to drive. The brakes were shot and the car made the worst sound every time you came to a stop. The car blew out huge puffs of black smoke every time you took off. Seriously, this car had seen better days but we couldn’t afford anything better and we definitely couldn’t afford to fix it. We never bought new clothes, we could barely afford groceries let alone any ‘perks’. There were days I went without coffee because that was a luxury (GASP!!!!). I remember the days that we would be so excited to be able to get a slush from the corner store and on a good day we could rent a movie.

So, as I was driving to work that morning, I began to mentally slap myself. I suddenly had taken on the belief that I constantly needed to be striving for bigger and better. Now, don’t get me wrong I do believe in DREAMING BIG and working towards those goals but not at the expense of losing your thankfulness. I began to take inventory on my life. I have a beautiful house; a house that at one time was a dream and not a reality. I have a car that I still love and feel completely safe in. I have a beautiful family and we seldom go without. I realized that somewhere along the way, I lost my thankfulness for everything I had been given. I bought into the commercialism of this age. I bought into the “keeping up with the Jones” mentality. I bought into the reward of ‘getting‘ instead of the reward of ‘giving‘. This is what began to drive me.

My friends, if we live life like that, we will never be happy because we will never have enough. I realized how far God had brought me and how much I had been given. I realized that I needed to find my thankfulness again. As I recalled all these things that morning in my short drive to work I began to be thankful again. I could finally see just how blessed I was and how I actually wasn’t broke at all. The very moment that I began to find my thankfulness, was the moment I felt peace settle down around me. I became happy again. You know it’s crazy that being ungrateful and unthankful steals your joy away too.

We can get our priorities so out of whack by comparing what others have with what we don’t. Trying to arrive at some destination to which we think we will FINALLY be happy.

Reality is: There is no amount of possessions that will finally make us ARRIVE at happiness; it’s when we become THANKFUL for every moment, every blessing, and all our surroundings that we FINALLY ARRIVE.

Stay thankful, My Friends!!