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<h5 style="padding-left: 390px;">Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/erix/">erix!</a></h5>
I've been in a downer of a mood the past few days—no particular reason. It's never a fun place to be, but it's particularly a pain Thanksgiving week, when you're supposed to be all grateful for everything.

It's not the first time in my life I've felt a bit cynical about gratitude. Well, maybe I've never been cynical of gratitude itself, but I've definitely been suspicious of the people who seem to go through life with such an abundance of it. <strong>"Give thanks in all things" is a concept that hasn't come naturally to me, particularly after my divorce.</strong>

Counseling helped, but after a while I began to feel like I would forever be reaching back into my past and producing all the negatives, to examine one more time. It felt like a very grim, long-term exercise. I needed a new approach.

I stopped going to counseling, found a new church and started meeting with one of the pastors, who brought up the idea of gratitude, and pointed me to this <a href="http://www.acfnewsource.org/religion/gratitude_theory.html">Gratitude Theory</a>. I didn't know how much it would really help, but I knew it couldn't hurt. I decided to try being deliberately thankful for the good things in my life. As it turned out, it triggered just the paradigm shift I needed.

Here are a few things I've learned about gratitude since:

<strong>1. Gratitude is just as satisfying when it's gathered up in small crumbs.</strong>
This is the lesson that has stuck with me most since reading one of the books my pastor suggested, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tree-Full-Angels-Seeing-Ordinary/dp/0062548689">A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary</a> (by Macrina Wiederkehr). Macrina writes about how often we go through life looking for the "big loaf" (the dream house or job, the perfect relationship or church),  passing up the many delicious crumbs along the way. <strong>If you gather up the crumbs, she says, you will soon have more than a loaf's worth to feast on.</strong> From my experience these past few years, I can confirm the truth of this approach.

<strong>2. Gratitude is about more than just recognizing what you're thankful for.</strong>
Sure, you can notice what you're thankful for, write it all down and call it good, but I've discovered that taking that gratitude a step further multiplies its value in my life. The main way I've done this is through the <a href="http://www.halfwaytonormal.com/?p=472">Love List Project</a>. Some important change takes place when you ask yourself "What do I love?" rather than just "What am I thankful for?" <strong>It becomes not just something you're looking outside of yourself for, waiting for it to pop into your life, but something you recognize <em>inside</em> of yourself, that you can shape your life around.</strong> You become less passive and more proactive about what you love and how it plays out around you.

<strong>3. Gratitude can be stored up for the winter.</strong>
I used to fight it and feel guilty, but I've finally come to accept that <strong>there are going to be days and even stretches of weeks when the last thing I feel like doing is counting my blessings.</strong> Maybe several things have gone wrong, right in a row, or maybe I'm just feeling generally depressed and pessimistic. Whatever's at the root of it, I can expect to have seasons of drought or stretches of dark, cold winter. Sometimes I can shake myself out of those seasons enough to find something in the moment to be grateful for—like a day of bright sun piercing through weeks of grey—but not always.

That's OK, though, because <strong>I think the gratitude we claim in our plentiful seasons can be stockpiled and accessed later, to sustain us.</strong> And this is something I can be truly grateful for on a Thanksgiving eve when I'm feeling a bit down.