I was asked to speak to my congregation a couple of weeks ago. I decided to post it on this blog. It may be a little long, but hopefully worth the time.
I was reading about an experience a young mother had with her three-year-old as she was praying with him. She related the following:
“I knelt beside my three-year-old and listened to his scrambled bedtime prayer: ‘I’m thankful for Mommy and Daddy, snow and clouds. I’m thankful for Santa Claus. I’m thankful for pizza and my big brother. Thank you for food. Thank you for everything.’”
“I waited as he hesitated. With such a long inventory of blessings, I assumed he was deciding between continuing his list and jumping into his warm, inviting bed. After a long pause, he hastily added, ‘Oh, and please bless our dumb old cat.’ He then finished his prayer with an emphatic ‘AMEN.’” 1
This experience caused this young mother to look at her life and to contrast her adult life with her children’s lives. She continued:
“I tried to remember the last time I had thanked the Lord for such things. Certainly my life was filled with small blessings. Like my son, I thought pizza was delightful, but never included it in my prayers. I enjoyed snow and clouds too, but I never mentioned them either.” She then wrote:
“I liked to think I omitted such items because they were too insignificant to include among important adult acknowledgements and appeals. But I knew that in reality I no longer noticed them. I had become so busy with “to do” lists and responsibilities that I no longer paid attention to the tiny purple flowers dotting the backyard, the intricacies of leaves, or the earth-washed smell of fresh rain.”
“Unlike me, my children noticed all the details of their young lives. Nothing escaped their observant eyes and appreciative hearts. My five-year-old ran for the sheer joy of feeling his healthy body move—not to burn calories or reach his target heart rate. My three-year-old danced exuberantly whenever music was played and squished mud between his toes just to feel the warm, gloppy ooze. My baby was a study in joy. He tasted soap bubbles, smeared his hair with applesauce, and chased shiny, black beetles—unfettered by grown-up notions of cleanliness or repugnance toward six-legged creatures.” 2
My intent was not to write about being grateful and what we should be grateful for. Rather, I would like to share insights that have helped me to know better HOW to be grateful. My focus is to remind us about the secrets that young children seem to know instinctively and that teenagers and adults seem to forget about, secrets that the young mother realized in the story I related.
D o you recall what she said about not paying attention to the tiny purple flowers in her backyard, the intricacies of leaves, and the earth-washed smell of fresh rain? How she had forgotten what it feels like to dance when music was played, to squish mud between her toes, to taste soap bubbles, to know the joy of smearing hair with applesauce, and chasing shiny black beetles?
I love Primary songs, and one of my favorites comes to mind:
Whenever I hear the song of a bird or look at the blue, blue sky, whenever I feel the rain on my face or the wind as it rushes by,
Whenever I touch a velvet rose or walk by a lilac tree, I’m glad that I live in this beautiful world Heavenly Father created for me.
He gave me my eyes that I might see the color of butterfly wings. He gave me my ears that I might hear the magical sound of things.
He gave me my life, my mind, my heart, I thank Him reverently for all His creations of which I’m a part. Yes I know Heavenly Father loves me. 3
Did we get part of the secret from the story of the young mother and the Primary song above? It involves enjoying our senses, being aware of them. It involves s-l-o-w-i-n-g d-o-w-n our lives and living in the present—the here and now. When was the last time we took time to listen for the song of a bird or look at the blue sky? When did we last touch or smell a velvet rose? When did we last decide to slow down and listen to the magical sound of things or dance when a particular song came on—for no other reason than to experience life? I’m not proposing that we smear our hair with applesauce, but what I am recommending is that you and I SLOW DOWN and literally and figuratively smell the roses. It’s about allowing slowing down and allowing our senses to help us feel gratitude.
By doing so, we will begin to do what the children’s song indicated in the last line: we [will] thank Him reverently for all His creations [for which we] are part. We will more fully come to know, as the song says, [that] Heavenly Father loves [us]. 4 Slowing down and experiencing the moment in which we are, can be called being MINDFUL. Mindfulness, I believe, is the big, overarching secret, the very key to gratitude and the way to know and feel God’s love.
Let me share a couple of experiences I had recently that will help define what I mean by being mindful through living in the here and now and enjoying our feelings and senses.
I have had all kinds of aches and pains for many years, particularly in my lower back. I’ve been to the chiropractor many times, I’ve purchased a special bed, I’ve taken literally bottles of ibuprofen through the years, I’ve tried to keep a good posture, but I still have back issues, especially in the middle of the night and when I wake up in the morning. My wife has experienced her own issues relative to our advancing years, and recently she got this wild hare about taking yoga classes.
I initially was less than enthusiastic about it but I finally decided that I would try it with her and see what happened.
The first time we went, we both became nauseous. It was SO hard! But we continued to go, my wife more often than me. It still is hard. I am not into yoga meditation and chanting that sometimes is done at the classes, but I am getting a little bit better at contorting my body into the movements and poses. And let me be clear: anybody who does yoga knows that the contorting of the body forces one to focus on just the breathing and the sensations of the body, and NOTHING ELSE! I sense the strains, the heat of the muscles, the breathing.
Since starting to do yoga, not only has my back and balance improved, but it has forced me to be mindful for 60 or 90 minutes, and that is a good thing for me. As I slow down and am mindful about the experience, I notice that my back is getting better, that I have a wife who challenges me and helps me to do things I probably wouldn’t do otherwise, that I have two arms and two legs with which to do yoga, that I am actually able to some of the actions, and that I have been blessed financially to be able to take the classes. I feel grateful that I have a car in which to drive to the classes, and the money to put gas in the car, and that afterwards I have a home to return to.
The other experience I want to share has to do with my experience in the last area of my mission to Argentina. It was the first (and probably the last) time missionaries had lived in this particular place, and there was no running hot water or heat in the shower area of the bathroom. Occasionally it got very cold. What I would do during those cold spells was to go without showering for a couple of days but then I would shiver my way through a 3-4 minute ordeal, only turning on the water to get wet and to rinse.
Some days I forget, but I often try to go to a mindful place and remember how it was by I luxuriating under a stream of warm water. Afterwards, in a mindful place, I will really enjoy and feel gratitude for stepping out of the shower and not seeing my breath.
And that brings up another aspect of being mindful: slowing down and being in the here and now enough to realize what blessings I have right now that others don’t have. It’s being able to feel gratitude without being compelled by our circumstances to feel gratitude. It doesn’t come from a place of pride but rather, a gratefulness that comes from mindfulness.
Let me share an example of what I mean from my extended family. I have a nephew who was born without the ability to rotate his arms, to turn his palms upward. They always face downward, or perpendicular to the ground. For me, it is a simple, mindless action to rotate my palms but for him it is an impossibility. To his credit, he has not allowed the disability to stop him from using his arms and hands as best he can. He has learned to play the piano (palms down), he has learned to play the trombone (palms perpendicular), and has even learned to play lacrosse (palms perpendicular).
When I succeed at being mindful, especially when I pray my morning prayer, I will rotate my palms up and down a couple of times. That is my way to express to Heavenly Father that I am trying to be grateful for those physical blessings that I might take for granted.
When I succeed at being mindful, I express gratitude for being free of pain in that moment because so many of His children have so much physical pain. When I am mindful, I have thanked Him for being able to swallow because I was hospitalized a few years ago with epiglottitis, which was a swollen epiglottis that made it terribly painful to swallow and for which I had to be hospitalized in intensive care.
When I succeed at being mindful, I am grateful to be able to see because I have worn glasses since age 5 and have feared getting a sharp blow to my head and having my retinas detach. I try to utter a little prayer of thanksgiving when I look at the mountains which surround where I live here in Southern California, when I see the white or gray of clouds, the green of grass in my yard, the red of my car, the blue of the ocean, the orange of pumpkins, the black of licorice.
I really believe that my senses help me to be grateful, but I must slow down and be in the here and now to have these realizations. In the Bible story of the ten lepers, I wonder if after being healed of leprosy, the nine neglected to give thanks to Him because they did not stay in the moment. Perhaps their lives quickly became crowded with details and trivialities. Maybe they were impatient and wanted to quickly join their families and community, wanting to forget about their former lives altogether. Perhaps they felt entitled. Regardless, once the miracle took place, they did not feel the need to offer thanks; they lost their mindfulness.
As you and I plead with the Lord to receive blessings in our prayers, are we mindful enough to thank Him for giving us blessings? Do we ever purposefully offer a prayer of gratitude for all of our blessings and not made a single request? When I have done that, I have noticed that it puts me in a mindful place, and I notice that I will thank Him for blessings that I normally wouldn’t and that I might take for granted. I am reminded of the words of King Benjamin recorded in Mosiah 2:21:
“I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, If ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”
The truth is that indeed the Lord lends us our very breath which allows us to live. He blesses us with so much that we often don’t notice or that we take for granted. I don’t want to be like the ungrateful nine lepers. I would rather be mindful and return daily to the Worker of miracles in my life and fall at His feet and worship Him by offering my gratitude.
I am grateful for having the Gospel in my life. I am grateful for a loving wife who supports me and helps do difficult things like taking yoga classes, and who works alongside of me in the Addiction Recovery Program of LDS Family Services. I am grateful for that Program and for the Twelve Steps of Recovery. I am grateful for the hard earned sobriety of my heroin-addicted son what has 19 months clean and sober. I am grateful for my Priesthood. I am grateful to have a temple so close and a car to get me there and to the Chapel because they haven’t always been so close and we haven’t always had a car. I am grateful for Church leaders like our bishop and stake presidency and general Church leaders. I am grateful for music and the joy that it brings me, and that I am able to hear.
Perhaps most importantly, when I am mindful and realize my fallen state, that I am a sinner laden with sins and multiple weaknesses and imperfections, I am humbly grateful for the pain which He suffered and the drops of blood that He spilled for me in the Garden of Gethsemane. I marvel that he would descend from his throne divine to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine.5 I am grateful that He should care for me enough to die for me.6 I am grateful to His Father who love me so much that He sent His only Begotten Son. It helps me to be grateful when I am mindful of His love.
1.Lisa Ray Turner, The Song of Gratitude, June 1993 Liahona
2.Ibid
3. My Heavenly Father Loves Me, Children’s Songbook, p.228
4.Ibid
5.I Stand All Amazed, Hymns, p.193
6.Ibid
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