Gratitude

I learned the lesson 30 months ago that gratitude is an extremely powerful thing. I can say with certainty it was the first step to the joyful place I am in life today, but I had a moment where I first had to make a choice.

As part of my ministry at Church, I led women through healing principles and in late 2012 one of those principles was gratitude. The lesson material was great, but it was all head knowledge. Not that I didn’t have moments of gratitude but it was an attitude not a way of life. I decided I wanted to increase my gratitude so I took on one of the materials suggestions, to start a daily gratitude journal. I figured I would start January 1^st and try it out for one year. After a few weeks I was really enjoying it and noticing I was even more positive than usual.

Then.

Day 23

I had a miscarriage.

My furthest along to date, even Sean had suspected , and even though I couldn’t bring myself to test yet, we were enjoying sharing new plans. And that evening we shared tears instead. As I got into bed that night I looked at my gratitude journal sitting there and contemplated. Do I write something today of all days?! And the thought that flooded my mind was how grateful I was that this time I finally had Sean to share the grief with, and that even at our lowest point we had managed to find laughter together. And so that’s what I wrote.

The next day we had our small group.  We had built a family with these people yet at first we weren’t sure we could share immediately, still so raw, but God had other plans, He had one of our friends sing a song that included the lyrics “When my world is shaking, heaven stands, When my heart is breaking I never leave your hands.” Considering the name of my personal blog is ‘Lori in HIS hands’, I knew that was our cue to open up. And we were of course overwhelmed by the love poured out over us.  And so that night I again looked at my gratitude journal and thought, how can I not be grateful for the love God showed us through our friends.

Then the next evening we served at our ministry, and again wondered if we should try to  hide our raw pain. Only a few minutes with our community of leaders, whom  we purported to have an honest and transparent relationship with, and we decided to open up about our grief. We hadn’t always had safe people in Church to share with, and we were about to test the waters with our deepest hurt. And we were not disappointed. Once again, we were overwhelmed by the care people took with our wounds, how they hugged when they had no words, and the words of ‘me too’ poured out from unexpected places. And then the band played ‘It Is Well’ that night, an unexpected shift from the usual songs they played. And so again that night I looked at my gratitude journal and realized the very ministry that encouraged my keeping it has now proved the value in it so profoundly and I wrote in it that night.

And after that I didn’t even have to question each night if I would write, I just continued to find reasons in the coming days, weeks and months, no matter how hard it got. And today, 30 months later, I am still writing in my gratitude journal.

And through my gratefulness, joy has found me.