Attending Church was a weekly practice for me growing up. My mother insisted that I should join the neighborhood children and go to Church. Ironically, while packing me off, the only time she herself attended the "House of the Lord,"was either for a funeral or wedding. That struck me as highly contradictory. Even worse, by the time I got home after hours of watching the machinations of the adults, my mother was busy enumerating her burdens.
Gratitude and the intentional practice of counting one's blessings were "attitudes" that I developed much later in life. For too long, I tried my mother's ways of telling my troubles to anyone who would listen, worry about problems - real and imagined and giving away my mind, piece by piece, to anything and anyone that disturbed me. None of these strategies worked - neither consistently nor produced the results I desired.
See, my desires were and remain no different from anyone else'.
As you, I desire to live a healthy, joy-filled, abundant and prosperous life. The challenge was the parameters kept changing. Abundance and prosperity were measured against the size of my bank account, whether I owned or rented a house, my job title and salary and where and how often we vacationed. Joy was dependent on fulfilling those requirements. My health deteriorated as I did not.
This state of affairs continued well into my 30's. It mattered not that my income was well above average, the fact that by then I had owned two houses, the latest model truck and car were parked in my garage, my credit was excellent (if not the size of my bank account) and that I had traveled a fair bit of the world. Certainly, I had heard that gratitude was the best attitude; I even had several gratitude journals, books, tapes and attended countless seminars by then.
Something, however, was still off.
One day my eyes just opened and my hearing unblocked as I sat talking with an inmate. This was not my first conversation with an incarcerated person nor with this individual. I was working in a correctional facility going on four years at the time of my "holy encounter" with this person.
The basic story was the same as any I had heard before from inmates and even my own. Growing up with a single parent struggling to make ends meet, feelings of abandonment by the other parent, childhood sexual abuse, physical and verbal abuse by parent, raised in an environment of poverty-consciousness, etc. All this eventually translated into a misguided pursuit of belonging, happiness, success, wealth and wholeness.
The turning point conversation for me was when the individual said to me, "You know that you are a prisoner just like me, right?" My initial reaction was to rule him out of order, to tell him in no uncertain terms that he had passed his place. Instead, I looked at him in wide-eyed silence and allowed his observation to sink in.
From that day, I took a full inventory of my life. I checked the number of bars on my cell and the strength of each. Then I prayed for Wisdom to lead me out. What happened in the next few years not only released me from my prison but changed my course. I stopped measuring, calculating and complaining.
My title now is "Primary Counter of Blessings."
The houses, the cars and the bling do not matter to me now. Whether there is a lover in my life does not make me any more happy or sad. There is a sense of well being about me now and it purifies with each passing day and/or challenge. My friends say that I am glowing. I am way more discerning about what and who I allow in my consciousness and entertain in my physical space and for how long.
Those are some of the blessings being intentionally grateful has brought to me. Finally, I am free!
It would be my privilege and honour to discuss or hear about your journey in gratitude. Feel free to email me, leave a comment here or on our Facebook page. You may also follow us on Twitter.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday! Namaste
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