Gratitude...a discussion

I feel so much gratitude on so many levels to be where I am today.  Like other converts, I am the only one in my family that is a member of the church but I know that unlike some, my transition was relatively easy to make.  It is difficult for me to just tell you how much love I have felt this past year – from all of you.  The truths I have come to know.  The happiness I’ve felt.  It is hard to explain to you all today, how many things I have learned over the past year and what I am grateful for, but I will try to narrow it down to just a few that have been the root causes of others and I feel that these root causes can be found at the bottom of all of your blessings as well.  So today I will be speaking to you about gratitude.

Being new, I feel one of the greatest blessings I have received is having the knowledge that there is a God.  We often take that fundamental truth for granted.   We get carried away by the details but think about it… so many people are still in doubt.  They feel the sprit in certain situations and have an inkling that there is something bigger than just them, but don’t have a testimony.  I’ve travelled a lot over the past 10 years since my mom is a flight attendant and we visit family in Russia often.  I started a tradition or I guess what I now know was a revelation, several years ago.  Whenever the plane experienced bad turbulence during the flight, I always took a deep breath and said to myself, “well, this is my destiny; this is what is supposed to happen.  My path in life has led me to this point”.  From that point, I always believed in destiny.  It made life so much better knowing that there is a path laid out for me that no matter what happened it was for the best.  One day, a smart guy came up to me and asked, “so Olga, who do you think created that path for you?”  I couldn’t give him a straight answer.  He asked me before then if I believed in God.  I told him I wasn’t sure.  Being the logical being that I am, it made me think.  How could I be so sure that my life has a purpose, and destiny acts upon my everyday interactions and events, and yet, there was no guardian behind it; no being to consciously put it together for me.  Even though he does not want to admit this, that smart guy had a major influence on my testimony that not only does God live…but he EXISTS, in the first place.  Have you ever stopped and asked yourself what your testimony is based on?  What the cornerstone of everything is?  Of course, you know that the answer is Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, but how often do you simply bask in the glorious knowledge of knowing that fact?  I am truly grateful for this knowledge and I urge all of you to be grateful too.

So what is gratitude?  I tried looking it up in the Bible Dictionary, but the page sent me to “Thanksgiving”.  I looked under thanksgiving and found another reference.  This time it said “see also Ingratitude (not very promising), praise, prayer, rejoice, thank, thanks”.  Praise, prayer, rejoicing – all actions that bring inherent happiness to our souls.  Happiness because we trust in the Lord.  We praise the Lord for our blessings; pray for guidance; and rejoice the answers he sends through the spirit’s whisperings.  In the April 2007 General Conference, Bonnie Parkin spoke on Gratitude, calling it a guide to Happiness: “Mercies and blessings come in different forms—sometimes as hard things. Yet the Lord said, “Thou shalt thank the Lord thy God in all things.” All things means just that: good things, difficult things—not just some things. He has commanded us to be grateful because He knows being grateful will make us happy. This is another evidence of His love.” (close quote) This kind of gratitude – the all encompassing kind – goes hand in hand with one basic principles: Trusting in the Lord.  I learned this lesson this past spring when I was faced with making decisions on my future career and where I wanted to spend the summer.  I was worried about several factors and it was becoming overwhelming.  Finally, at a breaking point one night in March, sitting in the parking lot of the institute looking at the bushes in front of me covered in snow, I started thinking about church and somehow suddenly felt so calm.  Somehow, I felt that all would be okay.  That things would work out the way they needed to.  Trust in the Lord was the only phrase that was stuck in my mind.  Now, I definitely have the testimony that Heavenly Father has a plan and we have to have faith and trust in the things that happen to us.  Just as Sister Parkin quoted, we have to thank the Lord in all things, no matter what they are.  There is just no way of knowing from our place in the world, how events right now will affect us in the future.  There could be positive endings to even the things that seem to be absolutely horrible right now.

Another part of that quote states that being grateful will ultimately make us happy.  Logically, that makes complete sense.  If you stop and consider all of your blessings, you’ll realize just how many you have. President Monson, in the October 2010 General Conference said, “My brothers and sisters, to express gratitude is gracious and honorable, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live with gratitude ever in our hearts is to touch heaven." (close quote).  To touch heaven… I can’t even imagine that level of happiness.  But I assure you, I want to reach for that – I’m sure you do too, to be so filled with gratitude for being alive and having all the things we do that our souls are touching heaven.  It is easier to be grateful around this time of the year with Thanksgiving and Christmas, but what about during the other ten months?  How do we keep our hearts filled with the spirit and gratitude?  I know one thing that makes me stop and think is when something happens to someone I know or a friend is talking about their problems.  We start comparing situations, people, things.  Is it really fair to only realize what you have when you’re looking at someone who doesn’t? Doesn’t seem good to me.  The key to always keeping gratitude with us is to let it be a part of almost every day.  A friend of mine, gave me a great question to ask myself as I was preparing for this talk.  He said, “what if you woke up tomorrow and you only had what you said you were grateful for in your prayers?” Interesting question, right?  I’m sure we would all have “this day”… lol but what else?  Family, friends.  Regardless, I bet there are some things we are leaving out of our daily gratitude to Heavenly Father.    

President Monson stated in another October 2010 conference talk, “A grateful heart, then, comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives.  This requires conscious effort at least until we have truly learned and cultivated an attitude of gratitude.  Often we feel grateful and intend to express our thanks but forget to do so or just don’t get around to it.  Someone has said that “feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it”. (close quote)  Two points stood out to me in this passage.  The first being that we need to cultivate an “attitude of gratitude”.  It is more than a feeling we have sometimes, it is a complete transformation that stays with us perpetually.  The other point was that sometimes we do feel gratitude and want to express it but then we get distracted and forget.  I know this has happened to everyone.  We mean the best, we really do,  but we are human and our nature gets to us sometimes.  However, we have to remember the purpose of our time here on Earth.  Alma 42:4 in reference to the Fall and Garden of Eden states that “and thus we see, that there was a time granted unto man to repent, yea, a probationary time, a time to repent and serve God”.  Setting priorities and remembering the most important things in life will be the actions that help us be grateful and give those wrapped up presents to the ones around us, without forgetting.  It’s not that we don’t have time to be grateful, it’s that we chose to spend our time on other things.  I urge all of you to make gratitude a priority in life.  You never know how that act of kindness will lift someone’s soul or bring a blessing upon you.  And who knows, perhaps you will create an attitude and begin to touch heaven.

In closing I would like to share this quote from Jeffrey R. Holland…

 “I have struggled to find an adequate way to tell you how loved of God you are and how grateful we on this stand are for you. I am trying to be voice for the very angels of heaven in thanking you for every good thing you have ever done, for every kind word you have ever said, for every sacrifice you have ever made in extending to someone—to anyone—the beauty and blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (9 October 2010, Jeffrey R. Holland, Because of Your Faith)

Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are proud of us and grateful for the things we do.  We need to be proactive in spreading the gratitude we feel to those around.  To constantly have those thoughts and feelings so that we may be truly happy.  I am so grateful for the things that happened two years ago; that I met a member of the church; and then fought him for more than a year before understanding the gospel.  I am so grateful to all of you for being an example during this first year of learning as being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Thank you.  I leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.