“Sometimes it seems that our entire economy is based on distracting women from their blessings.” – Glennon Doyle Melton

In August of this year, Glennon Doyle Melton blogged called Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt. You can read it on her August 11 post at Momastery.com. I won’t dive too much into it, her words are far better than mine. But, it got me thinking about this whole gratitude thing.

Well, actually, it got me choked up. As I sniffed back a tear I looked around my office. I fight with my office weekly and have for years. Each time the new Pottery Barn catalog comes in the mail, I search dreamily through it’s pages, admiring the dream offices they create. I move things around trying to get comfortable, and swear each time that when we move I am going to pick a better room and finally have a paint color on the walls, a daybed or couch on one wall, and a layout that makes me happy.

In the meantime, earlier this year, I began chalk-painting my office furniture as a part of a “make-over”. We came back from Key West and I knew just what I wanted to do. Well, I got busy starting it and it’s now in a state of half-done. I actually have cardboard boxes underneath a cabinet waiting for me to give it another coat, finish painting the bottom, distress it, and give it a coat of wax. It doesn’t even have knobs on the drawers. They were removed for painting and are inside. It’s been that way since April. Yes, that is 7 months.

Glennon, however, challenged me to put on my perspectacles and give my office another look.

I have my own office. I don’t have to share it with anyone. Some people have jobs where they work in some stale office cubical somewhere with sneezy, drippy, germ spreading employees all around (clearly this used to be a thing for me). Other people are searching desperately for work. Some entrepreneurs are stressing about how to keep the lights on, and others are barely making ends meet.

I am grateful to have my very own room, in our wonderful house, in our safe neighborhood in the town I love. It is warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and it even has a bathroom connected to it. I have amazing clients, work I love, and I can come in here and do it anytime I need and want to. And, if I don’t want to, I can get in my almost paid off dependable Jeep and drive to the coffee shop, or a park, or just walk outside to my deck and sit in the sunshine, because I have those things. So many do not.

When I am in my office, music is playing on an old 2nd generation iPhone I have it rigged to some old hand-me-down computer speakers. I even have to keep it plugged in because it no longer holds a charge… but it hooks to my wifi, and plays gorgeous music via Pandora all day long. Some people work in noisy, dirty shops and have to wear earplugs. Heck, some people can’t even hear!

I am drinking a cup of delicious tea. I didn’t have to leave my office to make it. I filled my little electric tea kettle with water from the tap and brewed it while I worked. Like Glennon said in her post, I have access to clean water whenever I want, day or night. 780 million people worldwide (one in nine) lack access to clean water and I have it right when I need it. Whether I want to drink it as tea, bathe in it, give some to Finlay, or rinse off my dishes after I eat, I have it right at the touch of a faucet.

I open a drawer, and I have pens, pencils, erasers, paper, calculators, notepads, Post-its… well, loads of stuff at my fingertips with which I can process the work I do. I can hop in my Jeep and buy more when it runs out. Crazier still, I can have amazon.com deliver it to my house. I don’t even have to leave! These are things I have at my fingertips, and they are the very things my 7 year old sponsored child, Lilia, asks for so she can draw and write and paint. My care packages to her contain colored pencils, sharpeners, notebooks and notepads. She is so grateful for these items, and I consider them office tools and supplies. She writes me letters on the things I send her, and those letters fill my heart.

So, I borrowed Glennon’s perspectacles today and vowed to keep them on… express gratitude and grace instead of feeling want and a desire for perfection. I will look around more often and express thanks instead of feeling lack, stress, or ‘should’-ing myself. Thank you, God, for our community, our home, my office, my furniture, my tools and systems, thank you for all of it. Thank you that I have enough. That I have not just want I need, but also things that simply make my life easier. There is work to be done in this room and in my life, there are voids to fill, businesses to nurture, gifts to share, and lives to change. I, for one, want to stop focusing on a perfect office, and instead enjoy what I have and the life I am so very blessed to love.

As we enter into this Thanksgiving holiday, it is easier to be grateful… it seems to be top of mind. The challenge is carrying it out into all of our other days. I am challenged to do that this year, and keep these perspectacles on!

If you are interested in learning more about how others cope with their own day-to-day obstacles (none of which I have, I am so very grateful to say), how to sponsor a child like Lilia, or give a gift of compassion to someone in need this holiday season, please visit the World Vision website.