When I’m feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of making a living, parenting my children, trying to be a helpful member of my community, I try to preempt any feelings of self-pity by counting my blessings “one by one.” There is great wisdom in the Sunday School standard, “Count your blessings.” Gratitude can change everything. Dark moments can lose their tenacious hold when placed under warming lamp of gratitude.
As a young child, my Sunday School teachers at Greenwood Park Methodist Church, Mrs. Eileen Cresswell and Mrs. Cynthia Lawrence (nee Reardon), taught me this powerful truth. Of course I did not then know of the life-long impact their life-lessons would have upon me. It was under their tutelage that I learned that there is always something for which to be grateful. These women embodied this timeless truth, and encountered me, their timid charge, week-by-week with the injunction to live as one who was grateful for all he had.
I think often of my long walk down Blackburn Road to Greenwood Park Methodist Church, and of the youth “guild” I attended as a young adolescent – and I try to continue to learn that life’s struggles are made a lot easier when my heart is brimming with gratitude.
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