It's the season for thanksgiving and I have so much to be thankful for!

So many of my friends are posting things they are thankful for every day this month and I wish I could be dedicated enough to do the same. But since my days are often a little chaotic I'm sure I will skip days which will add another FAIL to my list of things I set out to accomplish. Hopefully by blogging the things I am thankful for I can list several in one post which will allow me a little grace.

Which brings me to the first on my list, Grace. I am definitely thankful for Gods grace every day. I think of all the graces He has given me and often find myself ashamed that Im usually not even half as gracious to the people around me. I fall short with my children, my family, in traffic, with my internet service provider :), etc. Being gracious is something that I have really started to make myself aware of every second of every day. I found this great list on the all-knowing internet from Richard Blackaby's book, “Putting a Face on Grace” that is really helping me put into perspective how to show grace more often.

•Speak words intended to build up, not to bring down.
•Focus on others need rather than your own.
•Freely forgive.
•Swallow you pride and say, “I’m sorry”, and “I was wrong.”
•Live your life with a goal of “no regrets”.
•Don’t keep score of what is fair.
•Grace doesn’t condemn or give up on people.
•Grace emphasizes mercy, not justice.
•Read 1 Corinthians 13 regularly.

And for those who wonder

1 Corinthians 13
English Standard Version (ESV)
The Way of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.