THE MOM STOP: Making a resolution to take an attitude of gratitude this year

During those times when I was worried or overly stressed out, I’d often vent to my dad — whose advice was almost always the same.

“Take an attitude of gratitude, my dear,” he’d tell me. “Don’t let worrying about tomorrow ruin your today.”

Being grateful for what we have in life can be tough, especially during difficult years.

While it’s easy to say I am thankful for three healthy, generally happy children, it’s not so easy to be grateful when, for instance, I get a call from the principal’s office or when I worry if I’m making the right parenting decisions. It’s easy to be thankful when life seems to be gliding along easily, but it's not as easy to look on the bright side, say, when your child ends up in the hospital and you aren’t sure why they are sick.

An attitude for gratitude is a viewpoint that my dad, who was a recovering alcoholic of almost 31 years, lived by. He had seen firsthand the depths of despair, the so-called “rock bottom.” And he was able to climb out of it, tooth and nail, and be thankful for every sober year that came after that. He knew, from experience, to be thankful for every moment and that tomorrow is never a given.

And while I am so thankful that he found sobriety while I was still a kid and that he was such an instrumental person in my life — how much I wish he had been given more moments.

Thinking about the New Year, there are a lot of things I would like to accomplish in 2022.

I’d love to finally lose the “baby weight” – because I’m not sure you can call it “baby weight” when your youngest child is in elementary school. I’d love to accomplish a few home improvement projects, or take my almost-teenage daughter on a big mother/daughter trip.

But looking back on the pandemic in the last two years, I’ve also learned that the best plans sometimes go awry. Things don’t always come out as we hope.

In the last year, more Americans — about 800,000 people — died of COVID, including one of my relatives. In the last two years, life certainly does not seem as certain as it once did. I’ve taken precautions, gotten the vaccine and the booster, but the pandemic has shaped my general outlook, as I’m sure it has so many others.

And so I’m going to make a different New Year’s resolution this year — to take an attitude of gratitude. I’m going to strive to be thankful for what God has granted me, to be grateful for each day as it comes.

I know there will be days when I’m run ragged from work and taking the kids to evening activities, when my kids are arguing or there never seems to be quite enough money as we’d like, or when things don’t turn out as we had hoped. It’s that moment that I hope I hear my late father’s words: “Take an attitude of gratitude.” I hope I can be present in the moment and be thankful for each day.

For Christmas this year, my sister gave me a gold bar necklace and on it is engraved with the word “grateful” in our father’s handwriting. She had taken a note that he had written her before his death in 2019, and tried to find a word that was meaningful both to him and to us. And there, in his almost illegible handwriting, was the word “grateful.” Twice.

What’s neat about the necklace is that on the clasp is an engraved QR code. And when I scan it with my phone, my dad’s voice comes to life — taken from a voicemail he had left me long ago.

“I think you are a wonderful human being, mother and wife, and I am so grateful you are my daughter,” he said in the voicemail.

Grateful. I am grateful that I had a dad who constantly reaffirmed the idea of being thankful for what we have, and it is his words, both written and in voice, that will continue to remind me to do better. To be thankful, to be grateful for every day that we are given.

Because while it’s fun thinking about New Year’s resolutions or plans for 2022, I hope to do better being present in the moment, and be thankful for it.

Happy New Year.

Lydia Seabol Avant writes The Mom Stop for The Tuscaloosa News. Reach her at momstopcolumn@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: THE MOM STOP: Making a resolution to take an attitude of gratitude