I came across an interesting article in the January 2009 issue of Outside magazine.  The title is ?Thanks for Nothing?.  It?s a little late for the holiday, but I think it is relevant to every day.  I thought that I would share it with all of you and see what you think.  It seems that we are hard-wired to give thanks in life.  It makes us feel good, pretty wild. 

[Last year, while suffering from midwinter malaise, I did something rash:  I signed up for a happiness course in Berkeley, California, called ?Awakening Joy.?  It was founded in Buddhism but also incorporated elements of the emerging field of positive psychology.  Some parts, like a 200-person sing-along to ?Amazing Grace,? were brutal.  But I did find a surprisingly effect way to reduce stress:  gratitude exercises. 
University of California Davis professor of psychology Robert Emmons, author of the book Thanks (2007), hypothesizes that expressing gratitude causes us to release pleasure-inducing hormones, like dopamine.  But I wasn?t concerned with the biochemical rationale.  Once a week, I wrote a list of things that made me grateful.  It sounds cheesy, but it worked.  Put the name of a good friend on paper and all of a sudden life doesn?t seem so daunting.  ? C.P.]

That's what I was thinking...wondering how often and how long I go without considering what I have to be thankful for.  This would be a potentially life-altering discipline to put into practice.  I'm sure it must be one of the "spiritual disciplines".

Brandy, one of the things I can write down is that I'm grateful for you and the others who give of their time, talent, and resources to be worship leaders at LQ.  Thanks for doing what you do!

Oh, sorry about all of the ? marks in the original post, I guess you can't really type in MS Word and paste it into the discussion board without formatting errors.  Ah well. 

I second the "warm fuzzy" thread - I have tears in my eyes!  Silly post-partem hormones...