This is a periodic blog feature I call “grace notes.” It occasionally captures my jottings of incidental gratitude. My hope is that this practice will make me and you more aware of the constant flow of amazing good we are perpetually steeped in, which we are surrounded by all the time. It is here only asking to be noticed and amplified.

So now I am furthering my ongoing goal of appreciating such a continuous, overflowing abundance of random good. I’ve taken photographs of some of them with my iPhone, which you can see in this post.

It’s been a while! Let’s start this gratitude list with:

• Grateful for visits from  our older daughter for my birthday, and our younger daughter for her birthday. I’m so grateful they both prioritized being with us. (Photos of my birthday were on a separate blog post; photos of our daughter’s birthday you can see below.) I’m also grateful for their uneventful travel for these wintery visits.
• Grateful for flowers during a nice, cold, snowy winter.
• Grateful for a cozy home with a sweet man I love.
• Grateful for the health and safety of my friends and family, as well as my own. Grateful for the functionality of the body, sight, hearing, abilities of hands, and the capability to walk. Grateful for safety from falling and protection from accident.
• Grateful both of our daughters are employed in good jobs, using their skills and intelligence for the good of the world.
• Grateful my husband sewed me a new, heavy, fleece, forest green bathrobe. Grateful he enjoys using my mom’s old sewing machine.
• Grateful for a new iPhone 17Pro with a good trade-in deal. Grateful it is orange!
• Grateful for my sisters and the progress they are both making in their lives. I’m grateful the sister who just downsized gave her whole collection of stamps to our younger daughter. I’m grateful my other sister and I chat frequently.
• I’m grateful for our dear church and the earnest dedication of its members.
• Grateful for my office studio, where I spend most of my time, as well as my 1950’s kitchen, where I’ve been trying new recipes lately.
• Grateful for a good interlibrary loan system, and for the community I have through several book groups.
• Grateful to learn a homeschooling friend recently married a man we inadvertently introduced her to. (Because our kids were doing an activity, we got her son to go as well, and now, over a decade later, she married the man who led that activity.)
• Grateful my husband does 90% of the shoveling. I’m also grateful he does the laundry and the dishes.
• Grateful for all my art materials, my pastels and paint, my pens and ink, glue, paper, journals, TOYS!
• Grateful for my podcast (A Cup of Cold Water) entering its second year of weekly episodes, and this blog entering year 18 (!) of daily posts. Grateful my husband’s podcast (The Bible Speaks to You) continues to do well too.
• Grateful for a spirit of experimentation, learning, growth, and discovery. How interesting would life be without that?
• Grateful that Truth is actually true. What a relief that is.
• Grateful for all the people that are standing up against corruption, and voting with their dollars not to support billionaires. I’m grateful that most people are upstanding and moral, and not as disappointing as many are that are in the news.
• Grateful that when I went into the dentist to get a crown, they decided I actually only needed a filling.
• Grateful for cars and groceries, camera and computer, sunsets and rainbows, shrimp, halibut, kippered salmon, imported cheese, zippers, windows, the carillon which chimes from a block away, fog, hand-me-downs, reblooming amaryllis, silhouettes, birthday cut out cookies, our fireplace, warm clothes, inspiration, thick hot chocolate in demitasse cups, violin solos at church, every good habit, sinks, snuggles, lightbulbs, cribbage most days after dinner, the alphabet, every lucid, constructive thought, diversity, egalitarianism, ideals, the profundity of nature.
• As always, I’m so very grateful to each one of you dear blog readers, without whom I wouldn’t do this. Thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting this content. It means a lot to me, and I appreciate the qualities in you that resonate with the amplification of good. May every blessing come your way.

Share some of your grace notes in the comments!