Gratitude

I was inspired by my little sister for this weeks blog. She posted on her Facebook about her experience at the Garth Brooks concert on Friday night. I appreciated her post and I felt like I would also chip in about my experience as well.
Friday night my husband Nick, a friend Carrie and I went to the Garth Brooks/Trisha Yearwood concert in Omaha, Nebraska. I had seen Garth Brooks in concert many years ago and have watched his concert specials and such when I was growing up. My older sister was obsessed with Garth Brooks so in turn I have grown to love him as well. I appreciate his music and have always felt that he puts his whole soul into his music. And his concerts are amazing. You can truly tell that he loves what he does.
My little sister was pointing out the other day about how grateful that Garth is about what he does and the privileges that he has. He is a person that seems truly grateful to be doing the exact thing that he loves. And he appreciates the audience for coming out and playing with him. Friday he shared one of his new songs. When the song was over he smiled and thanked the audience for treating his new stuff with the same excitement that they treated the old stuff.
To me it is a lesson in gratitude. Sometimes we forget to be thankful for the things that we have. I am thankful to get to work the job that I have, a job that I love and feel led to do. I know that we are not all in that boat, I have worked the crappy jobs too but we need to remember to be thankful that we have a job at all. And when we land that dream job we definitely need to be thankful that God has put us in such a position.
Garth Brooks is like super crazy rich, in an interview with Barbara Walters in the 90s he said that he has more money than his children's children could spend. I am not sure if that is really true. I mean I know he is not hurting for money. And with the assets he has he could not care what other people think, he could not care about adding more shows to his tour if his shows sell out so that everyone that wants to see his show gets to. I know that he makes more money with every show he does, but how many artists do you know are willing to do 2 shows a night to please the fans? With everything he has and has accomplished he could just sit on his high throne and look down upon the rest of us but instead he appears to be genuinely grateful that people want to come to his shows. He seems grateful for the opportunity to play.
So I challenge us this week to find what we are genuinely grateful for. Whether it be our jobs or our families, whatever it might be. I believe the more thanks we give to God for what we have the more blessings we will receive. We need to start putting out more postivity in the world, more thanks for our blessings for even when the world does not seem to be going our way, there is always something to be positive about.
Emerson loves Garth's music, since he was an infant, Garth's voice has calmed him down when he was upset. Yesterday as I was listening to Nick's phone play music a song called "The Change" came on. It is not a song that Garth sang Friday night but it is one of my favorites. The chorus goes like this "I hear them saying, you will never change things, and no matter what you do it is still the same thing, but it is not the world that I am changing, I do this so this world will know that it will not change me." It really struck a chord with me yesterday. I thought this is exactly it. If we can show the world that we are grateful and that we care about others, it might not change the whole world but it will show that there is still hope and that there is power in not letting the world jade us.
Okay, I will get off my fangirl box for now. The real message is just that we need to be more grateful, more positive and thank God for the wonderful gifts that he has put in front of us. The more we do that, I believe the better our lives will be. What are you grateful for today?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time,
~Michelle