How Gratitude Can Change a Heart

In October it will have been seven years. Seven years and counting. Seven years of counting His gifts. That fall morning in 2009, I started a small list. Honestly, I didn’t know how long I would last. I am great at starting things, but often I fizzle out over time. I had no idea how much I would need an ever-growing list that I would add to each week of the gifts God brought to me. In November of that year, God knew I would start a journey for me that I would not want to take. He knew I would need gratitude to keep my head above water and my mind sane. With each gift that I wrote down {or for many years typed on a screen to post on my blog, The Architect and the Artist}, my attitude changed. My heart held onto hope. A hope that maybe life is not as bad as it seems. Maybe when I am not watching He is giving gifts.

So after almost seven years and working my way to 7,000 gifts, I have come to realize my great need for continuing my list. Yes, there have been seasons in life where the list was slower to grow. There have been times when it has exploded with abundance. All along, however, my heart needed this list. If I was going to survive the ups and especially the downs of life, I needed gratitude for what God was doing.  After all these years of intentional gratitude, I now realize that my heart has changed; it is stronger and healthy because I chose to say thank you.Here is how gratitude can change a heart…

A grumpy heart needs gratitude There are times when I have a rough day. My mood is grumpy at best…foul at worst. Or maybe there is a tinge of jealousy creeping into my heart. Or maybe seemingly nothing has gone my way. Those are the days that I am finding I need to pull out my list and take a few minutes to thank God for the good I may have missed. Without fail, my mood improves if I will just sit and thank Him.

Gratefulness floods the heart with positive memories. I love that I can go back to my lists and remember what God has done for me. There are events and people that have happened in my life that I have completely forgotten about…flowers from a student, uplifting words, watching my son ice climb, playing family games. All gifts that would be forgotten if they weren’t written down. So many times we remember the bad, but a gratitude list can help us recall the good.

A hurting heart makes a gratitude list grow faster. During 2013, I went through some major changes in life that brought severe heartache. While I can look back and now see a glimmer of what God was doing and why He was allowing such devastation, at the time I was completely lost. All I could do was list as many graces as possible so that I wouldn’t sink under the deepening grief. My list exploded during that time. I am sure part of why I survived it all had to do with counting God’s gifts. The more I ached, the more I counted His graces and kept my head above the waves of grief.

Gratitude makes a heart trust. Having a list of what God has done has caused me to trust Him more. There is just too much evidence in those gratitude journals to not believe Him. So when I am facing anxiety over an upcoming event all I have to do is remember all those graces and gifts listed. While trust has NEVER been my strong suit, practicing gratefulness has helped me overcome my doubt about God’s goodness.

Cultivate

So why not start counting? You may find what your heart has needed all along.

Which of these reasons above shows your need to cultivate gratitude in your own life? Is it grumpiness? Painful memories? Do you need to trust God more?

Debbie lives in central Alaska with her husband and two sons. She loves to read, write, and spend time with loved ones. She homeschools her youngest and runs an in-home business offering Spanish lessons to other homeschoolers. She blogs about faith at The Architect and the Artist and about teaching Spanish at Debbie’s Spanish Learning.