How to Make a Blessing Tree

Blessing Tree created by Shirley Lee 
(click to see large PDF)

During my long bout with illness and injury last year, I thought a lot about my blessings and listened to the old song "Count Your Blessing" and merrily sung along with the Gaither's CD (song is in first few minutes of this video).  (Not to be confused with the wonderful old hymn lyrics by Oatman.)  It helped me to be more patient and to know I would get better.

Then I felt lead to create a Blessing Tree of all my blessings I could think of as a visible way to remember when I'm feeling down or angry.  This Blessing Tree is meant to recenter me in the God I trust.

I have included how to make a blessing tree on my blog as a way to share this with others.  I may explain why some of the things listed made it onto my tree in future posts.  I did my tree in PowerPoint because I tend to be more geeky than artistic.  I can not  draw a straight line even with a ruler!  Feel free to hand-draw your Blessing Tree or to use a genealogy template if that works better for you. If you want to use PowerPoint for a neater look and are not good at free-form charting, put God at the top and use the Organization Chart feature to create an upside-down tree. It is your tree so it can look anyway you like.

If you usually share blessings around the table at Thanksgiving or other holidays, this might be a great family activity to do after the meal.  Get the kids involved with the drawing using water-soluble colored markers.  If you need some more inspiration to get started, listen to some blessings  and gratitude Christina related songs for ideas on what you should be thankful for.

Steps to Make A Blessing Tree

1. Put personal words, a phrase, or a scripture to represent your God at the base or root of the tree.
2. Think about all the high-level things your God has given you and have those branch as nodes or leaves from the base.
3. What other blessings (small or large) can you note that branch from those first few nodes?  List them.
4. Continue branching from each node until you can not think of anything else.  This is a living tree so you can continue to add nodes at any time.