Gratitude

My handsome husband, Wayne and me, Santa Monica Pier - Summer 2006 I spoke in my church last Sunday (3/18/07) and it was a great experience for me....so I thought I would share it here. Enjoy! --- Gratitude --- In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. I THESSALONIANS 5:18 Over the past year, I have made a conscious effort to recognize things in my life that for which I have deep gratitude. This effort came out of a desire to change my attitude about life. I wanted to be more positive and to have more joy in my life. I was happy, but to me, happiness masks fears, covers them up for a time, but they are there, just under the surface. I had spent many, many years with fear in my life and I was ready to give it all away. To me, living with Joy is the absence of fear. Joy is the reason we are here – the ultimate goal. The more I spent time with the idea of having joy in my life, the more it became apparent that I must have gratitude for ALL things in my life; the good and the bad. When I was in theMTC I remembered hearing someone say that we needed to have “an attitude of Gratitude.” This quote stayed in my mind for the past 20 years for a reason. I have realized that nothing new can come into your life unless you are grateful for what you already have. So, I started to appreciate what there was, in the here and now instead of always wanting something else and something more. I have asked Father often for help to figure all of this out. During this time of wanting to have more joy in my life, I met Becca Levie –“Living on Purpose” - Talk about Becca She inspired gratitude in me from the moment our eyes met. (see http://www.beccalevie.com ) Gratitude is also a form of grammar. To learn the grammar of gratitude, practice saying "thank you" for happy and challenging experiences, for people, animals, things, art, memories, dreams. Count your blessings, and praise God. Utter blessings, and express your appreciation to everything and everyone you encounter. By blessing others, we are blessed. I want to share with you one of the things I decided to do to help me have more Gratitude in my life. I began by keeping a Gratitude Journal Bought a note book – carried it with me - Encourage others to keep such a note book Things that could be written out of gratitude could include: The kindness of strangers Holding your child in your arms Boundless imagination Delighting in other people’s children Feeling the presence of the Spirit Following my intuition and being thrilled that I did Daydreaming Answers to prayers Watching the sunset Meeting a kindred spirit Having a Nap Being able to trust another human being Realizing that there are no coincidences Laughing so hard that my sides hurt The first bite of banana pudding Reading a book that changes your life Another thing I have consistently done was to ask in prayer to find learning opportunities and to help me have gratitude through these experiences. And Father blesses me often when I pay attention to what life is handing me. A few weeks ago, I had the once in a life time opportunity to see one of my “Sheros” in person as I went to hear the poet Maya Angelou speak. She spoke about finding “The Rainbows in the Clouds.” How we need to find the gratitude in even the most miserable of life’s situations. She spoke of how we need to look at things differently, to laugh more and to have joy for life is short. Once again, an amazing learning opportunity. I have an example of changing my attitude about a small thing in my life and I share this with deep love for my husband. Sock rolls – For many years, he has left socks rolled up in the laundry, seemingly not giving thought to the laundry-doer (me) having to unroll them. So, one day, I was grumbling in my head about his socks when it occurred to me that his feet go in to these socks everyday – that these are the feet that carry him to work to provide for out family, that these are the feet that I love to touch with my feet before falling asleep each night, so I started being thankful for his rolled up socks. His socks are still rolled up in the laundry, but now, my attitude about them has changed to an attitude filled with gratitude, and I don’t care if the socks are in a ball anymore, because they held his feet. This is a small example of how having an attitude of gratitude can change how you feel about a situation or a person.... without gratitude, I still would grumble about socks. In order to have complete gratitude, you MUST change the way you look at life. But what about the things in our lives that are just so painful, so terrifying, so full of injury that we just can not have any gratitude for them? What then? It is pretty easy to be grateful when life hums along smoothly. But I believe that gratitude holds us together even when we’re falling apart. Ironically, gratitude’s most powerful mysteries are often revealed when we are struggling in the midst of personal turmoil. When we stumble in the darkness, rage in anger, hurl our faith across the room, and abandon all hope. When we are busy crying ourselves to sleep, gratitude waits patiently to console and reassure us: there is a landscape larger than the one we can see. At these times, I have gone back in time, to the experience of being on the Church History trip and our first stop was to visit the Liberty Jail. There, seeing for myself, what that was like for our prophet, Joseph Smith changed me. This was a profound moment for me. A real “AH HA” moment. Turn with me to D & C 122:7 (this is the "and all this shall give thee experience" scripture...look it up) I knew at that time that there was a lesson in all of my past injuries and pain, and I knew that there always will be a lesson for me in all difficulties I would face in life. I often have spent time with this question - What is the lesson I am to learn? I have had injury in my life, as we all have. At this point in time, I have faced much of it, but from time to time, it comes back to haunt my sleep or as an insecurity or as a fear....at these times, I ask it, “What is it that I am to learn?” And invariably, there is a great lesson. Heavenly Father puts people in our lives that we are to learn from. And often, these great lessons come from these people. Interestingly enough, when the Bishop called me to speak today, I had just come from a 3 hour conversation with a dear friend. This conversation had left me physically spent; weary from deep emotion and not having too much gratitude. I was on I-15 stuck in traffic and said out loud to Father – “OK, I am feeling really alone, and I need you to help me and hold me now.” Then, not 10 minutes later my cell phone rings, “Hello Janet...this is the Bishop. Will you please speak on Sunday?” Immediately my heart’s attitude changed and I thought, “And this shall give thee experience...” For me, the lesson that has come from my own past injury has been inspired of God, as I would have never chosen if for myself. I feel inspired to share this lesson here, but feel some apprehension in doing so.... About 5 years ago I was in the midst of great personal turmoil, but I felt impressed through prayer and reading of my patriarchal blessing that I needed to complete my college education. I thought this was absolutely ludicrous as I would be the big 4-0 once I was finished. But, I started, one class at a time, and through this experience, I began to see that I was pretty smart and that God had given me the gift of intelligence. I can’t tell you what this did for my self esteem. I soared and excelled. During this time, I changed fields of employment and began in the helping field. I was blessed to have a very sacred obligation to help people at a major time of crisis. It took me out of my own misery and helped my heart heal in ways I never knew possible. As graduation time got closer, I started feeling impressed by the spirit to do more with education. I informed Heavenly Father that I was now 40 and well past the age of starting a whole new career, but I found myself signed up and in Graduate school 1 month after completing my Bachelor degree. Heavenly Father has shown me through the spirit and through life that I am to be a Marriage and Family Therapist so that I will be in a position to help other’s build and strengthen their lives and relationships. I have no idea how this will work out, but I am flying on faith and having gratitude daily that I get to have these experiences. When life gives you bittersweet chocolate, add sugar and make brownies. (I don’t’ like lemon aide.) Or – God has a plan for me (YOU TOO) and He will be there! I share this because I felt impressed that Heavenly Father wants us as His children to have more gratitude. To let our hearts sing to Him and to thank Him for all he has given us and to listen when He reaches out to us in a Sunset or in a smile or in rolled up socks. My lesson in returning to school brought deeper thinking into my life. Deeper thinking brought wanting more joy and wanting more joy brought me to Gratitude. And Gratitude has brought me unimaginable peace and love. And if you ask me if I would go back and trade all the hard, horrific things that I have lived through to get to this point, I would say, emphatically – NO – I have too much gratitude for the great lessons about patience, endurance, self-love, living for the experience of having joy and many more that have come from my personal sorrow. This has not been an easy path to walk. It has not always been pleasant. I have gone to my own ‘Liberty Jail’ and prayed my own prayer of pain to Father, and He has answered me with more love and abundance than I could have ever expected. LDS singer Hillary weeks has a line in a song that says, “every day that I walk on this earth, the more and more I learn of your (God’s) goodness, of His plan, who I am and where I fit in...” I think this is indicative of having gratitude; we get to learn about ourselves. If you find yourself in a place of sorrow and injury and challenges, turn to God, let Him hold you. Let Him be the one to guide your heart’s healing. It is possible and if you don’t think it is, please know this is from my heart when I say – Anything is possible with love, time and gratitude for God’s blessings – and even His blessings of sorrow. I’m in an amazing heart space because I found gratitude. Let Him who knows your heart best guide you along your path.