Gratitude

Some years I have found a way to do Lent well, other years not so much.

This year, way back in the different existence we inhabited at the time, I set myself a gratitude challenge: each day I would record three things for which I was grateful: the big things or the small. I bought a notebook. I tried to slot it into a routine.

There were rules. Only three and always three: no more than that on the good days, no fewer, either on tougher days or days when I didn't feel I had enough time to think about it. And no 'buts', or 'even better ifs': I was to record only the positives, without qualifying it with the doubts or hesitations or slight negatives on the side.

And I stuck with it. We have now entered the Easter season, and in theory, therefore I should have laid that little notebook to one side. But there are still blank pages, and the need to seek out, or to remember to recognise things for which to be grateful is still here, so, for now at least I am continuing. I have found my 'gratitude diary' has become a mixture of recording my appreciation of the things I still have, and the things I've lost, but have perhaps learned to appreciate more for their absence. In the midst of uncertainty and challenge, it feels valuable to make space to remember how much I have to be grateful for.

Since the beginning of Lent, the things I have to be grateful for in my daily life have in one sense, changed quite considerably. Small things have taken on renewed significance. My days, like everyone else's, look very different.

In another sense, though, the common threads which run through this record have scarcely changed at all: finding beauty; the practicalities and privileges which facilitate my comfortable life; the importance of relationships with others. I hope that this discipline of keeping this record will help me to continue to make space to remember to be grateful for these things, whatever form and shape they take.