Resolved

© 2018 Christy K Robinson

Since 2015, I've been writing about the benefits of being grateful. It's my one New Year resolution each year. Having only the one, it means I am more likely to keep my resolution.

Living a grateful life is a happier life, and less tense or fearful because I come to the place where God is in control, and not some negative force. For instance, I believe that our nation, and indeed the world, is headed for another financial crash that will be worse than the one that took us down from 2008 to the present--the one we still have not recovered from. Economists back this up in Forbes, Newsweek, LA Times, Fortune, and major news sources. For a self-employed person like me, who lives month to month teaching piano lessons and editing books, which are luxuries easily cut off in hard financial times, that's scary. Living the gig economy with no security net or pension fund, and no spousal income to fall back on, could be terrifying. In fact, two weeks ago, I got word that I'd be losing about $130 a month from my meager income, starting in January.

The gratitude attitude reminds me that God has brought me through impossible situations before. He's provided for me far beyond what I could earn or expect. He loves me, and calls me his daughter, and that places my welfare in his hands. I'm reminding myself that I must not be angry or resentful over a situation I can't control, and that I should be looking forward to the miracles, large and small, that God will perform on my behalf.

So though I know that a financial famine is coming, I'm planting my garden in the expectation and anticipation that God will show himself faithful again and again, with grace upon grace upon grace.

For out of His fullness [the superabundance of His grace and truth] we have all received grace upon grace [spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing, favor upon favor, and gift heaped upon gift]. John 1:16 AMP 

That's something to be grateful for in advance. I know the blessings are coming just as surely as I know the crash is coming. 

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Christy K Robinson is author of these sites:

·       Discovering Love (inspiration)

·       Rooting for Ancestors (history and genealogy)

·       William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

and of these books:

·       We Shall Be Changed (2010)

·       Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)

·       Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)

·       The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)

·       Effigy Hunter (2015)

·       Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

What it took me 5 decades to learn

© 2015 Christy K Robinson

I've always been thankful. When I receive a gift, I say "thank you" to the giver, or write a thank-you note before I use the item or spend the money. It's just good manners, as I was taught from infancy. I guess I thought that was enough: acknowledging the gift and telling the giver I liked it and they were very kind to give it. Not any more.

Gratitude is something deeper, I believe. The word comes from the Latin "gratus" or "gratia." We often use the word "grace" in faith settings, and it's usually defined as undeserved favor, or even as extreme as showing mercy to a known enemy. Gratitude is the condition of being thankful for a gift.

If the money or thing was earned, there's no grace about it--it's payment. But gratitude acknowledges that the giver owned something of value and relinquished it forever to the recipient with no expectation of repayment or reciprocation.

There's also a providential time element to consider. When I've been down to the wire on figuring how to get by in a financial situation (had to replace the tires on my car as they crumbled in the Arizona climate, website renewal came up, the air conditioning bill was $225, and my teaching income was next to nothing), I received gifts in the snail mail. Sometimes they come in the form of a freelance job (that I work for), sometimes as a gift card marked "With love from Jesus," sometimes as a "just because" gift, and sometimes a random stranger decides he likes the research articles on my history blog. But there's no accident that they came at exactly the right time. The givers may or may not recognize the whisper of God in their minds. But I do. That's another difference between feeling thankful and being grateful. I know the source of the generosity.

Something I've learned, again and again, but perhaps in a deeper way recently, is that gratitude is a lifeline out of despair. It doesn't make a lot of sense to be grateful for adverse circumstances, but I've found that being grateful that I'm beloved of God, and that I have the respect and love of friends, lifts me up from the pit where the Adversary flung me.

Rather than a rational explanation, the miraculous answer is that when I set my eyes on God, instead of my miserable circumstances, he has the opportunity to remind me from whence my blessings flow--and then sets them in motion. It's not that I deserve the blessing by my actions, but that he loves me and is liberal with his gifts.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, educator and philosopher, passed away in late 2015. His daughter Serena Dyer Pisoni wrote of a sensation of her father's presence in her car when she was feeling burdened by stress, and the lesson she took from it:

"I don't have to wait for ... the stress and the turmoil to go away in order to feel peace. In fact, it's just the opposite. I have to feel peace inside in order to get ... the turmoil to go away. I cannot control what's going on outside of me. But I can control how I react to it. I can choose peace at any time despite what is happening around me."

As mentioned in the video "Just Be Held," if my eyes are on the storm, I'm not seeing the one who's saying "Peace, be still."

So being thankful, nay, being grateful right down to my core, is what I hope to be, and hold in my heart in increasing measure, in the new year ahead.