When I was a little girl, my mom gave me a Disney classic movie and said she wanted me to have a copy of it because it was one of her favorite movies growing up. At first, I thought, how cool could an OLD movie possibly be? I was a child of the 80′s, I didn’t want to watch something made in the 60s. Yet, to make my mom happy, I agreed to watch it for her. And it soon became my favorite movie too.
It’s called Pollyanna. It’s about a young orphan girl who goes to live with her grouchy aunt, and ends up transforming the town through something she calls “The Glad Game.” With all the people in the town complaining all the woes of their circumstances in their life, Pollyanna forces them to stop thinking about the negative and concentrate and list out all the positive things in their life. Slowly they start realizing, they have a lot more to be thankful for than they realized, and their negative circumstances didn’t really seem that bad afterall.
For my mom and I, it became something between us while I grew up, whenever one of us were having a bad day, we would always bust out with “Let’s play the Glad Game.”
The other day, she hit me with it hard. In a text message (because, yes, my mom is cool and knows how to text.)
As you can see, I was being quite stubborn with my short and pouty “No”s. Yes, at age 30, we are still allowed to cross our arms and say no to our mom like a 5 year old. Do we ever grow out of that phase? 
But alas, I knew she was right. I knew I needed to stop being stubborn and focus on the positive.
So I turned to my “Sweet Words” folder. It’s my secret folder I have in my email inbox that I created for bad days when I’m feeling very poopy. Over the years, anytime someone has emailed me something sweet, or left a really sweet comment on the blog, I have moved it to my “Sweet Words” folder. It kind of serves as that printed reminder that I have a lot to be thankful for. For whatever reason beyond why I understand, God has used my words to inspire others, and yes, I like collecting their inspiring words back that they have sent. On days when I want to pout and act like a stubborn 5 year old to God complaining about whatever my circumstance is, He always reminds me of my Sweet Words folder which at this time has close to 2,000 kind emails in it. That’s almost 2,000 people who have poured their hearts out to me. Who stopped their day to write something when they didn’t have to.
And I’m glad to have each of their emails in my life. I’m glad that there are others out there who believe in random acts of kindness. I’m glad that we don’t have to do life alone, that we can all support each other on this journey of life. I’m glad that the Internet lets us reach beyond our physical address to touch hearts across the city, the state, the country and the world. I’m glad each of you are reading this and I’m hoping that it can encourage you to play the Glad Game today as well. So leave me a comment and tell me, what are 5 things you are glad about today? 
