Lessons in Keeping Up Gratitude

I am very grateful for some lessons learned recently. I had called my practitioner to talk about a few things we’d been working on for a while and during the call she could tell how inwardly focused I was about everything – very self-mesmerized – and she asked me where my gratitude was. She reminded me that my attitude of gratitude had been really strong and apparent to her several months ago but it felt pretty non-existent at this point. She also pointed out that my general focus was quite material rather than God-ward.

Well, it’s never fun to get a rebuke like that but I realized if I was being totally honest with myself, I was in a bad place mentally and whenever I find myself in a bad mental state it’s usually because I have gotten very inwardly focused to the exclusion of almost all else. Not surprisingly, when this happens I don’t actively look for or notice all the good that God is constantly pouring out. As we talked about this, one of the remedies she suggested for breaking out of this “mental miasma” as Mrs. Eddy calls it was for me to write down everything I was grateful for no matter how small and focus outward, looking for everything that was good around me. Then I needed to really spend time to recognize that it comes from God – to literally get down on my knees if necessary and be grateful for it. So, I got a notebook out and I started to write things down as they came to me. One of the things I had been so focused on was finding our next permanent home (we had sold our old house and have been living in a rental house that we own). I’d become more and more obsessed by the effort since it was taking much longer than expected. Therefore, the first thing I did each day was to give God thanks for the current home that he had provided. It’s actually quite beautiful where we are and it’s been a wonderful retreat for us in the past. I realized that I had been so focused on thinking ahead and worrying about where we were going to end up that I wasn’t loving and enjoying and being grateful for the beautiful place that God currently had me in! I also realized that I needed to pray more for my local community. This community is a small one that’s seen better days and it needed my love and prayers to lift it up and see it rightly. So, I started working with those things as well as others and each night I’d go through my gratitude list and just spend some time praying about it, being grateful for it and seeing that God was the source of it.

What’s been really amazing is that the effect of this new focus was almost immediate. I soon found myself feeling lighter in heart, and I started to notice more things every day to be grateful for. That first weekend after I’d started down this path, my daughter came up to visit us. She hadn’t been up here in quite a while. In times past during her visits we’ve often butted heads or it’s been a little up and down between us because we don’t see eye to eye on some things; but this visit was very harmonious. She expressed a lot of joy and gratitude for being here, and she told us how grateful she was that we had this place to come to – it was really wonderful to hear this from her and not something we’d heard in a while. The other thing I noticed after just a few days was when I was working at my desk I realized that I was much more focused at work. I’d actually been struggling a lot with my job just feeling kind of distracted and burnt out and not feeling like I was at my best at work. But I suddenly realized I had more energy, I was getting more things done, feeling enthused about helping my clients … it’s hard to put into words but it just felt really good.

I was thinking the other day how I’ve always loved that passage in the Bible that says “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51: 10) It speaks of a spiritual refreshment and rejuvenation – the turning of a page – but I realized this time that in the past I’ve always prayed and asked God to do that to me and then sat back and waited for something to happen, rather than taking the steps /making the effort like I’ve been doing now with elevating gratitude. It’s that effort that I feel is helping create in me this cleaner heart and is renewing a right spirit within me. I’m very grateful to my practitioner for that kick in the pants, and helping me to see and acknowledge God’s blessings and his love that’s all around when one looks for it.