Gratitude Journal, Focus on Strengths

Memories, Childhood, Encouragement, Self, & Strengths

These are the themes of this gratitude spread. Guidelines were to include a photo or drawing of yourself, a tag, some fabric or textile.

Bernice's prompts, in An Attitude of Gratitude Journal Challenge,

of quotes and verses were great starting points. This time instead of starting with text, I added it last, experimenting with white pens.

 The photo of my husband and I in high school is one of my favorites. Another high school student, now my brother-in-law, took a photo of Keith and I. We did not know it at the time. I think it was the day of our first fight and neither of us remember being as happy in the photo, or what we were arguing about. But the best thing, by far, about that day was this photo Kevin took. He superimposed the image onto another photo background, the record album of "Love Song". At first I transferred the whole photo image, but it messed up, so I printed another copy of it and cut out the photo you see below, gluing it on with matte medium. The photo reminds me to remember the good times.

When I think of myself, even now, I am the little girl in the photo below.

In the "strengths" journal prompts page there is a link to finding one's strengths. Also, questions were asked about our own strengths. I had a hard time. Keith helped and asked, "Why do we have a hard time just saying or writing our strengths?" It seems arrogant somehow. Who wants to hear (or see) someone "toot their own horn"? Not me. But I went ahead with the process. The verse from Philippians four states the only way I can do those things anyway. Thank  you Jesus! The exercise actually made me think of the qualities I value in people, and be consciously thankful for the close friends who have blessed my life. On the tags I included my children, and the quality I think of first with each one. On the lower tag is a homage to my maternal grandparents, who although have passed on, still live on in my heart and life.

I agree with the quote by Marilyn von Savant, "Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses."