"“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”" — ~Melodie Beattie 

 

Gratitude, in my opinion, is the beautiful art of love shown in the acknowledgement and appreciation for the goodness received. It is an expression of lavish love shown in the desire to return the kindness. Even if the person never gets to “ repay” the kindness received, the simple fact of having desired to do so shows that gratitude was felt, which I believe leads to another form of glorious love, which is loyalty. Loyalty to God and to others for the goodness received and loyalty to oneself for the knowledge and the security found in the personal decision that love is not one of the things one will push out of one’s life. I think our souls actually find rest in knowing that we are not going to engage in self-sabotage in the form of refusing love and gratitude.

 A grateful heart does not necessarily aim to see beauty in everything but it aims to see beauty where there is beauty to see. Having a grateful heart is not the same as having a heart in denial about the realities of life either. A grateful heart is a heart living in truth and in beauty.

In my life, gratitude is one of the most important things. It is actually one of the greatest pleasures in my life. When I think about gratitude, I am inclined to look back and remember some of the fiercest struggles of my life and I am grateful for the courage that I did not know existed in me and for the kindness received during that part of my life.

For instance, when I moved here from Brazil, I was only 18 and all the money I had in my pocket was like $200. It wasn't easy but it was great. I knew not even one word of English and to this day I try to remember exactly how I communicated with the airport and immigration personnel but I can’t quite remember. All I remember is that people helped me. I remember having conversations with them but I don’t remember in what language, since I only spoke two back then. And I know that it was not in Portuguese that I spoke because this is not a language a lot of people speak. Nor was it in the other language. It was an awesome thing! It is like I could speak all languages, nothing was beyond my reach; such was the intensity of the gratitude I felt to have started my journey here.

Today, anytime that I see a foreigner looking confused at an airport, I take the time to go over and offer kindness. And no matter how many times I do this; I feel I can never ever repay what was done for me. I get to do this for the rest of my life without ever reaching that moment where I get to say “I have repaid them”. What a blessing!