So, here we are already at my week one check-in for the “Never Miss November” gratitude challenge. Seven days in, and I’ve decided to drop the “never miss” part. Having a house full of boisterous young children is an exercise in missing a lot and still giving yourself credit for continuing to try. As such, it’s not too late for you to join the gratitude challenge. Our “It is Well With My Soul” Gratitude Journal is still on a special Thanksgiving sale for $12 a piece (or $10 a piece if you buy 5 or more).

But I did check the gratitude box quite a few times this week. I stumbled towards bed past 1am and saw the journal sitting on the table and made sure to write something. And it taught me that checking the box isn’t as significant as taking time to be still and feel gratitude. It wasn’t long before I switched to writing about the day the next morning when I could look back with fresh eyes.

One particular morning when I was optimistic about the day ahead and trying my fresh eyes on for size, I opened my planner and saw that my three-year-old had scribbled throughout this week and into next. How do I know the scribbles were his? Because they look just like the ones on our wall, the seats of our car, our piano bench, my exercise ball, the walls of our shower, and our kitchen floors. You’d think we could just hide or dispose of all writing implements around the house, but I’m a distractable writer and it’s just not to be.

These scribbles followed intense frustration the night before when his daddy picked the same cute guy up to take him to bed, and, in his playful attempts to wiggle away, he accidentally kicked a picture off the wall, which crashed to the floor and broke the frame. If there was ever a time to scream, “this is why we can’t have nice things!”, that would have been it.

But I sat staring at his scribbles in my planner, with its otherwise neat days measured out and racing by and thought, “how would it feel to unexpectedly find his scribbles if he was all grown up now? Or worse if he wasn’t here anymore?” How dear would I find every curve and point of those chaotic splashes of ink if they preserved a time now gone? And suddenly I felt grateful for them.

And that made me realize the real difference between checking the box of a gratitude journal and looking at the world in gratitude. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think one leads to the other. I think cultivating the habit of recording gratitude not only helps redirect your eyes to what’s joyful and poignant, but leaves a history for your posterity of what mattered to you.

Sometimes I wonder what my five-year-old’s impressions of me are at this stage. Do I seem erratic and angry? What will his memories be? Will he think I was fun and creative or overwhelmed and checked out? There are days of both and you can’t control what someone else will take away as the conclusion. My older siblings always talk about how all we ate was fish sticks. My mom remembers serving them twice.

Someday my son will remember me a certain way and maybe I’ll remember it differently. Who is to say who is right? But leaving a record of my gratitude (in a beautiful casing) will at least give him a way to know what mattered to me. Perhaps he’ll understand that I was trying.

I would love to hear your reflections on gratitude as you participate in the challenge with me. Please email your thoughts to ma****@me**************.com and I will share what readers had to say in my next post.

CLICK HERE to get your copy of our “It is Well With My Soul” Gratitude Journal.