We were sitting around the table eating spicy taco salad the other night (yum!) when my two-year old daughter piped up.

“Daddy, we watched Cars today. I liked it. There was a truck named Mack.”

My husband paused, a forkful of food halfway to his mouth. “That’s great! I thought you would like that movie!”

My daughter continued. “Daddy, thank you for boughting the DVD from the liberry for me.”

It was sweet and unprompted, this gratitude. No one nudged our little one to say thank you.

She has been doing this often lately.

It started at Christmas, while my husband and I were busy cleaning up shreds of wrapping paper. Our daughter had already said thank you while unwrapping each gift, but later she turned to us again and, surrounded by a little mountain of presents, said, “Thank you for giving dese to me.”

It’s normal for a toddler to say thank you in the moment (often with prompting … at least, in the case of my child anyway). But it’s unusual for a child to go back to someone after-the-fact and say thanks. Every time my daughter goes out of her way to express gratitude, my heart melts.

I’ve been doing some thinking about thankfulness. It was a conversation with my older sister Elaine, however, that really got things going.

“Have you read One Thousand Gifts?” Elaine asked.

“I’ve only read a little bit of it,” was my reply.

Elaine began telling me about how writing down God’s blessings is transforming her life. She then shared this verse with me: “I’m thanking you, God, from a full heart. I’m writing the book on your wonders” (Psalm 9:1).

Inspired, I found an empty burlap-covered journal and began scribbling my own list of thanks. After all, what harm is there in giving it a go? My sister was right. It is life-transforming.

I’ve discovered that gifts – what I call “moments of grace” – can be as simple as sitting in a coffee shop on my work break and slowly sipping a latte while waiting for the love of my life to arrive so we can go home and eat lunch together.

Most of the time, when I blog, it’s about the more large-scale moments of grace I’m experiencing in my life – grace during times of trial and faith lessons from everyday life challenges. I thought it was fitting then to rename the blog … for the third and (hopefully) final time.

Lately, as my fingers fly across the keyboard and as my pen glides across the pages of my gratitude journal, I often think about the way my heart melts when my daughter, unprompted, says thank you. And I can’t help but wonder if, as we express our gratitude for His gifts, God’s heart melts too.

I never want to take any of the grace-filled moments of my life for granted. I want to melt God’s heart with never-ending thankfulness. And so welcome to the latest blog redesign: Moments of Grace.