Gratitude Changes Everything

I never planned to be a blogger, but I feel God is calling me to share my thoughts on this website. It has really put me on my knees because only by God’s inspiration and grace will I be able to keep it up and write something of value.

Thinking about Richard brings memories of how his pithy statements put so many things into a right perspective. One thing he would always say when I complained about a situation is, “Gratitude changes everything, even when nothing changes.” Gratitude takes practice and I am glad he helped me learn to practice it over the years as it served us well in the end.

Gratitude protected us both during his illness. Being grateful for what God had done in our family and marriage, for his salvation, and for his continual presence and provision in our life kept our focus on him and not on what we were going through. Gratitude kept us rightly related to God and one another in the midst of suffering and difficulty.

The result of gratitude and resting in God’s sovereignty meant that the last year of his life, when Richard was sick and dying, was really the best year of our life together. We let go of thinking that life should be different and focused on all God had given us. We really valued and supported one another.

Just a day or so before he died when he was on hospice and no longer had tubes in his mouth we had a funny interchange. He was suffering from encephalopathy from the ammonia in his brain. It wasn’t as bad as it had been since he had been on liver dialysis for most of the week, but he still wasn’t thinking too clearly. In front of the hospice doctor, I asked him what had enabled him to get through all this so well. Of course, I was expecting him to give the Sunday School answer “God”, but instead he said “you.” Hoping to be a witness of our faith to the doctor, I then asked, “Well, what enabled me to go through all this?” When he answered “me”, I had to laugh. The truth is that we did help one another, but that would have been nothing without the love and presence of God that we felt so deeply and which gave us the strength in the midst of the suffering to go through it all with grace. Richard was a good husband, father and pastor. His desire to live by God’s truth helped keep me on God’s path. I thank God for the opportunities he gave us throughout our life to put his truth into practice. I hope that using the resources on this site will strengthen your faith and obedience to God as it did me. I highly recommend going through “The Impact of our Thought Life” if you want to experience more fully the abundant life God promises by being grateful, taking your thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ.