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Lifted out of depression by gratitude

How using gratitude can empower you...

By Valerie Minard

From Practical Spirituality

In a survey commissioned by spirituality.com, 84% of Americans said expressing gratitude reduces stress and depression and fosters better health and optimism.

But is gratitude merely having a positive attitude, looking at the cup as half-filled rather than empty? My friend Martha believes it's more than that. She found gratitude was a powerful tool to break a slide into depression.

In late 2002, Martha found herself in the middle of several life-changing transitions. She had just changed jobs from a very intense and focused position, with a strong sense of mission and purpose, to one that had involved the need to be more self-starting. Her family had just moved to a different state, so she was also dealing with a new location and environment which brought strain to her marriage.

While each step had been led by prayer, she couldn't help feeling a bit lost. She wondered how to define herself. "What is my mission and purpose now?" she asked herself. "Where do I fit in? What do I need to be doing?" But the answers didn't come.

Without any of her previous landmarks, Martha began to spiral downward. She continued to pray about this, but things just got worse, until one day it got so bad that she couldn't get out of bed.

"I was just completely immobilized," she says now. "It seemed like there wasn’t anything good in my life." She felt like she had reached the bottom and couldn't go any lower. So there she lay, in a mental fog that made it difficult even to pray.

But then, through the darkness, something cut through. One simple idea came. She recalls thinking, "For heavens sake, at least you can be grateful for one thing, just find one thing." Spirituality writer, Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures)"

So she looked around the room. "I could at least be grateful for this beautiful room that I'm in," she said to herself. It was a small thing, but it got her thought moving in the right direction.

As she thought about other things she was grateful for, the mental fog lifted for the first time in months, and she felt some light come through. Once the light started to shine, it gained momentum and got brighter and brighter. It was like a little crack in the door, opening wider.

When this kind of spiritual light touches you, Martha says, "thought starts to expand and that's what happened to me. My thought of what I was grateful for actually began to expand."

Her focus broadened to include more than the material things in her life. She began to be grateful for the day. Then her thought expanded to being grateful for the qualities expressed around her, toward her, and through her as a beloved child of the divine Father-Mother, God. This proved to be a turning point. As she continued, her attitude brightened. She got up and got started on her day.

Martha believes gratitude is a powerful form of prayer. Months of more petitionary prayer led her to this fresher way of praying, a way that worked better for her, with more spontaneity and grace. It enabled her to acknowledge and recognize God's presence and goodness in her life in a very tangible way.

The whole process of focusing on gratitude, what it can do for her, the different aspects it takes, and how she lives it, has continued to play a very important role in the way Martha lives. Now if the thought creeps in that she doesn't have anything to be grateful for, she kicks it right out. She hasn't been pulled back down since.

"When you are being grateful," Martha says, "it's hard to be resentful or angry or unloving at the same time. Gratitude lifts the entire atmosphere. I found that gratitude is a very sharp tool in our toolbox of prayer. It's formidable—I don't think there is anything that can resist it."

(First published on http://www.spirituality.com)