Quiet Gratitude

Lately, I’ve been thinking about thankfulness—not the scripted kind we post on social media or say around a crowded table once a year, but the quieter kind. The daily kind. The kind that doesn’t need a holiday to be valid.

If I’m honest, gratitude has always felt like something I’m supposed to practice rather than something that naturally spills out of me. I can make a list of blessings on command, sure. I can even write them in cute handwriting in a journal if the moment calls for it. But real thankfulness—the kind that doesn’t fade when circumstances shift—is deeper, harder, and far more honest.

Because thankfulness isn’t a mood. It’s not a day on the calendar. It’s not a caption or a quote.

Thankfulness is orientation. It’s posture. It’s the direction your heart leans when life is both more beautiful and more complicated than you expected.

I’m starting to realize that gratitude isn’t measured in what we say—we all know how to talk a good “I’m blessed” game. Gratitude shows up in how we live.

It’s in the way we hold what God gives us with open hands instead of white-knuckled fear.

It’s in the way we choose to see the mundane not as filler space between big moments, but as the place where God quietly does most of His work.

It’s in the way we stop long enough to notice—really notice—the small, steady graces that get lost when we’re rushing from one task to another.

And maybe most challenging of all—gratitude shows up in the waiting.

Not because we’re thankful for the uncertainty, but because we’re learning to trust the One who stands on the other side of it.

Starting REC has taught me this in ways I didn’t expect. It’s easy to say “thank you, God” when the paperwork goes through, or the phone call comes, or the next step suddenly appears. It’s much harder to live in a place of gratitude when the land still hasn’t surfaced, when the timeline stretches longer than comfort allows, when the future feels like a beautiful sketch with the most important lines still missing.

But even here—even in the ambiguity—I’m learning that thankfulness is not about getting what I want. It’s about remembering Who is leading me.

Maybe that’s all thankfulness really is—choosing to let the everyday moments become small altars, where we pause just long enough to say:

Even now, God… thank You.

With a heart learning gratitude in the slow and the steady—

Kehla