When I was a young boy and acting pouty, my mom would always remind me how much I had to be grateful for and ask me to list a few things. I’m not sure which I liked hearing less: “What are you grateful for?” or “Eat your vegetables!” I didn’t want to be grateful. I wanted to sulk and complain. Plus, I thought I first had to have something, or things needed to go my way, before I could be thankful: I’ll be grateful when . . . I get my way, my body feels better, or it’s Thanksgiving and we’re all being grateful.
In growing up and learning more about God and His law of universal good, I came to realize that gratitude always comes first! Gratitude is a game changer. It’s not just positive thinking or looking on the bright side. Gratitude is a transformative force that plays a vital role in healing because it is the affirmation of already-present health, harmony, and goodness from God. It is the way of seeing spiritual harmony, sometimes right when there seems to be a disturbed sense of ease, or dis-ease.
The consciousness of the ever-presence of God results in healing. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints” (p. 14).
Gratitude is being thankfully conscious of ever-present good, and it reverses every form of evil, or a sense of not-present good, including fear, lack, infirmity, and discord. Evil of any kind cannot exist in the allness of God any more than darkness can exist in light. The acknowledgment of the power and presence of God, our divine Father-Mother, results in healing, by revealing that there is no other power, presence, or influence. Then what had appeared outwardly as lack, depression, obstruction, or disease is eliminated from our experience, because it has been removed from thought and replaced with the consciousness of divine Love’s ever-presence.
I saw that loving God is a way of thanking Him for loving us.
I’ve experienced the transformative power of gratitude in my life. For several years, I struggled with darkness and depression after a traumatic experience had left me with an ongoing and paralyzing sense of fear. There were days and nights I didn’t know if I would make it. My wife and I prayed together daily, and I engaged different Christian Science practitioners to pray for me. I am grateful to each one of them for the freedom I eventually won.
A practice I began that made all the difference was to make a daily gratitude list. When I couldn’t focus on anything other than darkness or fear, I could at least be grateful for obvious things, like my family, Christian Science practitioners, and my home as a place where I could quietly get to know and love God. These lists turned me to the source of all blessings, God, and often became the catalyst for my Christian Science treatment.
As I was winning my way to understanding God’s present power in my life and seeing tremendous progress, I returned home from a walk one day and felt a strange sensation in my leg. I didn’t think much of it, but within a day or so, I was unable to walk or even stand. Sleeping also became nearly impossible because of the pain. When I looked at my leg, I became very alarmed. I did not have it diagnosed, but it appeared to be a severe case of varicose veins.
This felt like yet another daunting issue to make me feel discouraged, and I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray with me. I recommitted to starting every day praising God by adding to my gratitude list. It didn’t matter how small or insignificant each entry might have seemed; I noted the presence of good in my life, and acknowledged God as the source. I saw that loving God is a way of thanking Him for loving us.
As often happens when turning to God for healing, bad habits came to the surface to be corrected through prayer. During this time, my country and the world were going through quite a bit of turmoil, and I became suspicious, impatient, irritable, and easily distracted and annoyed by the latest headlines. And yet, I felt almost addicted to the bad news. It was clear that this habit needed to be addressed in my prayers. I felt divinely impelled to turn it all off and focus solely on what God was revealing.
I was less impressed with human hate and more interested in seeing divine Love in action.
If I was tempted to peek at the sensational headlines, the debates on social media, or my leg, I instead kept my eyes on the books in front of me. I was reading biblical accounts of Christ Jesus’ healings and teachings; accounts of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science and how she healed others as a result of her understanding of God; the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly; and Science and Health, which includes one hundred pages of healings people experienced just by reading that book. Like a horse with blinders on, I stayed focused on the truth that was shining up at me through those books. I did not stray!
But when there wasn’t much improvement physically, I was tempted to feel discouraged. My wife had a talk coming up in another state in a few weeks, and I felt strongly that it was right for me to be there and support her in this healing activity. By the day we were to leave I was using crutches, but with humility, I went.
The night before my wife’s talk I had an honest conversation with God, beginning with humbly and wholeheartedly thanking Him for the small evidence of healing I had witnessed thus far, and acknowledging that He would most certainly bring me all the way to realize a complete healing.
As I was cherishing this gratitude, I thought about how we read in Mrs. Eddy’s writings that “Mind governs the body” (Science and Health, p. 111). In quiet desperation, I reached out to God and asked, “What does that even mean—‘Mind governs the body’? Does God govern a brain, a material body, its functions and movements, veins and arteries?”
The answer was almost immediate, so simple and tender, yet it came with authority and conviction: “God, divine Mind, governs my thought about my body.” That was the answer! I felt a gentle, deep-seated calm.
Science and Health says, “Immortal Mind feeds the body with supernal freshness and fairness, supplying it with beautiful images of thought and destroying the woes of sense which each day brings to a nearer tomb” (p. 248). These “beautiful images of thought” govern our thinking about every aspect of our lives, and we find we have exactly what we need every moment.
Gratitude and love brought both physical and mental healing. I was free from the addiction to “bad news”—whether it was turmoil in the country, in my body, or in my past. I became more joyful, more at peace, less stressed, slower to react, and quicker to love. I was less impressed with human hate and more interested in seeing divine Love in action. The state of constant fearfulness and anxiety that had plagued me for so long faded.
Not long after this wonderful spiritual insight, my wife and I spent six months traveling tens of thousands of miles and visiting nearly a dozen countries. We walked hundreds of miles, climbing steep hills and countless flights of stairs—all with freedom, dominion, joy, and humble gratitude! There was no trace of a problem with my leg.
Science and Health says, “Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts” (p. 261). We can hold our ground and not be influenced by anything that does not contribute to knowing and loving God. This stand, as an expression of gratitude for divine Mind’s ability to lovingly maintain His own ideas, is truly transformative.
