Just Gratitude

I was so incredibly foolish. I suffered, or so I thought. I was miserable, but not dead. I was denied many things, but none of them essential and I scoffed at the notion that being grateful was a solution.

Shortly after I endured the destruction of my family in the form of an unexplained divorce, And I could barely walk,but was able to sit upright and moved from a wheelchair to a walker, I was totally depressed. I could no longer play the piano, which was nearly everything to me, I loved to run, and had been a competitive distance runner. I still found myself going for long runs for no apparent reason sometimes, only now I could not run at all. I knew full well that the depression medication I was prescribed had no effect and I looked elsewhere for my solution. A hymn stated that wen trials seem hard to bear we should "count our blessings." so, accordingly, I started a gratitude journal. I struggled with it. but, it became something to devote time to and while I thought thus, I was not thinking of myself, I failed to grasp the greatness of the idea I had been given. I was still made to feel worse because I thought of thing I was thankful for but they were taken from me. It made me bitter.
Eventually, I stopped dwelling on the past and instead focused on what I wanted in the future, and I set out to make it happen (never stopping to be grateful that I could decide to do that!)

In my religious upbringing I learned of a communication we each could personally receive from our father in Heaven, God, Creator. It is called a Patriarchal blessing. I got mine as soon as possible. I have almost memorized it and have no doubt it came from God. There are things told me that no one else could know, certainly not the guy who was a stranger who pronounced the blessing. Ok, so, in that blessing it is stated that it is of importance that I be born to my family, yeah, yeah, but it continues that it is significant that I be reserved to live in a time where I would be free to live and learn, etc. and a time where women had the right to do these things. Now, I have NEVER been concerned with Woman's rights, Quite the opposite, infact. In a Shakespeare class a teacher told me that it was people like me who made her desire to become a teacher because I spoke about how it was good that the Shrew learned her place in a play we were reading. My professor wanted to rid the world of such incorrect ideas of women being property, etc. Um, I was not property and I used and took my freedoms for granted, until at that low time of my life that many freedoms were stripped from me.

It was the cumulation of many things, but ultimately, as I was watching a documentary about Huguenots (because many ancestors are recorded as being Huguenots and I didn't know what that was) where people had to dare to worship as they desired, and it was then that I felt a flood of thankfulness when I realized how much I have been blessed in merely not being killed for believing what I did.

 Often I hear stories about the pioneers and early members of my own faith, and how they struggled. I thought how similar it was to an account of Alma and Amulek having to watch people be killed for believing a thing, then they were imprisoned, but this seems, in history to be the norm more than the exception. My ancestors as practically every person who lives in America came here to escape religious persecution. Like Lehi even, huh?

Anyhow, I am extremely thankful right now, and wish I had been all along. It would have no doubt made me feel thankful for the life I had instead dwelling on the life I could've had.