How Gratitude Can Change A Life: Yours

Sonora, California has to be the most beautiful place I have ever lived. I moved there in July, 2013 as a missionary. Evergreen trees rose in all directions, beautiful, lush, and peaceful. Lakes and reservoirs dotted the landscape and deer so tame wandered about that we would feed them from our hands. Located on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, Sonora bordered Yosemite National Park where hundreds of thousands of tourists would visit each year,

Me as a missionary in Sonora, CA. 2013

During that summer, a horrific fire broke loose in Tuolumne County that would threaten the region all around. Known as the Rim fire, it became the third largest wildfire in California history, and we were in the thick of it.  I wrote of my surroundings, "The sun here is blood red, and some mornings it is blocked out by the smoke.  Other mornings, when a few rays of light are able to creep in, it casts an eerie orange glow across the forest."

Smoke billowing near Tuolumne, CA

Around this time, probably in connection with smoke inhalation, I began to have terrible headaches. I had not experienced these often in my then 18 years of life, though my Mother had dealt with migraines for years. I began to see flashes and absence of light in my vision. A doctor soon prescribed me an anti-epilepsy medication which made me so drowsy, one might assume I had no sleep. Each morning I would wake at 6:30, and, as my companion was unable to exercise due to a broken ankle, I would wander around our apartment. I would often wake up in another room on the floor. Once I woke up with a spider crawling across my face (you can imagine how that went). In addition to this medical stress, I was in the works of training a new missionary and trying to support him through the struggles that he would experience. I quickly became depressed.

I spoke to Sister Judith Ure, our mission medical director, and one of the most beloved and highly regarded missionaries in the California Fresno Mission. She discussed with me a way to solve my depressed mood. She said something to the effect of, "Elder Martinez, when you come home each night I want you to pull out a notebook, and in that notebook I want you to list down three things you are grateful for that day. Just three things. The next day, do the same thing. I want you to do this for a week."  Naturally I was skeptical. I didn't feel like I particularly had a lot to be thankful for at the time. Yet, I trusted Sister Ure entirely so I would do it.

That first night after I spoke with her, I pulled out my notebook, opened to a page, and wrote down three things I was grateful for that day. As I wrote, I quickly realized there was more than three things I was grateful for. I was certainly grateful for my parents back home who supported and wrote me faithfully and for the letter I had received in the mail that day. I was also certainly thankful for all of my family who I knew loved me. I was grateful for church members in the area who treated us like we were their own family, though we were "strangers in a foreign land." I couldn't forget the warm meal we had been fed that night.

I found that I couldn't just write three things. It would be unjust of me to write just three things, really. By the time I was done, my list extended much further than I had expected. The next day, and the day after that, I would do the same thing. I would sit down and write the things I was grateful for that day. I would not simply write what I had written the day before and each day, the list was longer than I had intended.

By the end of the week, things had changed. In one short week, my entire outlook on things was different. I felt so much better!  Did my circumstances change? Certainly not. The forest was still on fire, my head still hurt, and I was still struggling with supporting my companion in the first stages of his mission. Nothing had changed. But somehow, the way I tackled it had.

So what can gratitude do for you?

It will help you realize that things are better than they seem.

It is easy for our minds, clouded with stress as they are, to perceive our monsters as much larger than they actually are.  When our troubles really might only make up 5% of what we have to manage daily, we may view them as 50%.  By writing down what we are grateful for we remind ourselves that we have lots more to manage than what is currently troubling us. That may seem counter intuitive; however, we quickly realize that the other things we have to manage are actually going fairly well, which brings relief and puts our troubles in perspective.

It will change how you approach the coming day.

When we wake up the morning after a bad day, our expectations are already set: the next day will be as bad, if not worse, than the day prior. By writing down what we are grateful for before going to bed, we sub-consciously prime ourselves to look for those things in the coming day. Thus we wake on a better note than we would otherwise.

It will reduce your stress and help you avoid difficult situations.

By being grateful, we seem to focus on the road ahead rather than what is directly in front of us. A UHP officer once explained to me why the police always prevail in high speed chases. As a highway patrolman, he is trained to keep his eye on the horizon rather than his immediate surroundings. He looks down the highway a mile ahead of where he is, while the suspect focuses on the few yards ahead of the car. This way the officer can anticipate and prepare for curves, traffic, and other factors that the criminal will not account for until it is already too late, frequently causing the suspect to wreck the vehicle.  By being grateful, you will focus on the horizon and dodge circumstances that would otherwise derail you.

It will remind you of the temporary nature of all things physical.
Being grateful will remind you that the smoke overhead will clear eventually. Unemployment, course work, mental burnout - it's all temporary.  As terrible as these things are to face at the time, they will be over eventually.  You won't be unemployed forever, though it can break your spirit.  Your classes will eventually end, the tests will be over, and you will eventually move on to other classes or your career.  Even chronic physical and mental disabilities are temporary.  How can that be?  We associate lifelong illness and disability with forever, because it certainly feels that way.  For the rest of a person's life they may be afflicted.  However, deep inside, their spirit is the same person they always were, even before these afflictions fell upon them.  Even if they are afflicted for life, upon the parting of the body and the spirit, physical death, their spirit is freed, no longer disabled physically or mentally and as alive as they ever were. Does that make it easier now? No. You may have to deal with that issue for 10, 25, even 75 years.  But it separates the stigma that physical and mental disabilities are forever - they are not.  They are temporary in the lens of the Almighty.

Life will still deal you unfavorable hands. Your circumstances may not change.  The way you tackle your circumstances will and this will lead you to increased joy and purpose in life.  See how a gratitude journal can change your life the way it did mine.

What Saving A Boy Taught Me About The Savior

A sharp breeze kicked at my heels as I glanced out across the water.  A spray from the waves of the pool I was lifeguarding would occasionally come up towards me.  It was a day late in May and dozens of children had come to swim at our wave pool, as is typical during the winding down period of the school year.  I had been a lifeguard for several years and, as one can imagine at a wave pool, had experienced numerous saves.  It was not uncommon for a lifeguard at this pool to save someone, or multiple people, daily.

My eyes drifted to a small boy nearly directly in front of me.  He was jumping in the waves and enjoying his time, right in line with the perimeter the teachers had created at the point where the water deepened.  I looked right, observing the young ones in the shallow water playing and splashing, the few walking the deck.  I brought my eyes left again, quickly observing each child as I scanned when suddenly, I spotted the first small boy who had been directly in front of me being dragged back into the deep water by the waves.  He was now in water much taller than he was and any attempt to stay above the water was futile.  There was no time to call for backup, no time to turn off the waves. Now was the time to act.

I skirted the edge of the pool, eyes locked on the boy.  He turned to look at me just as a wave crashed into the back of his head.  The water reached around his head towards his face, almost resembling watery fingers encapsulating him.  His eyes met mine just before the water covered his face, and I yelled out to him, "I'm going to come for you!"

I jumped off the deck into the water and, eyes open, I spotted him near me underwater, thrashing.  The save went smoothly from there, wrapping my arm around his body and pulling him close to me while I held the buoy in my other hand. I took us back to the shallow as he coughed a bit and it was over.  I made sure he was alright, and he was, and I went back to my guard stand.  Yet, all this time later this rescue would come back to my mind.  He had looked into my eyes as he was drowning, something that was rather uncommon in my experience. What was he thinking when he looked up into my eyes?

I hope that he had one hundred percent confidence that I would come for him.  I hope that he had one hundred percent confidence that I was stronger than the waves and the water, that I had the ability to save him, the ability to come for him and not be drown too.

I would hope that when we see the Savior that we would have one hundred percent confidence, absolute trust, that He will come for us, and not just that He will come for us, but that He has the ability to save us.

Like the boy who had been gradually dragged back into waves, even depths, from which he could not rescue himself, you may at times be dragged back into the deep.  This may be from sins, no matter how small or large, even to the point of covenant breaking.  It also may be no fault of your own, uncontrollable situations such as mental disorders, physical challenges, and spiritual crisis.

On the last night of his mortal excursion, the Lord sat with his Apostles in perhaps one of the most sacred instances of instruction in the New Testament.  The Savior, in response to the Apostle's fear that He would no longer be with them, exhorted them, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me"  He continues, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you" (John 14:1,18).

Don't lose heart.  For those of you battling the temptations and sins of the flesh, even to the point of covenant breaking, the Lord has promised you great redemption.  In the words of Stephen E. Robinson, essentially the Lord says to you, "It doesn't matter what you did.  Whatever it was, no matter how horrible or vile, is not the issue.  The issue here is that whatever your sin was or is, I can erase it.  I can clean you up and make you innocent, pure, and worthy, and I can do it today; I can do it now" (8).  Believe that He has the ability to make you as clean as you ever were.

If you face the vast variety of crisis in the world that exist in both the human mind and around us, things mental, physical, financial, etc., know that the Lord is keenly aware of you.  If you haven't learned this by now, it is not in the Lord's nature to snap his fingers and cure or fix your problems instantaneously, though each of us, including myself, find ourselves praying that it will happen that way.  There may be times when the Lord will just keep you alive.  Know that there is a sunrise, somewhere, someday.  That may not come today or tomorrow, but it will come eventually.  Someday, all things will be made right.  For now, press on with faith in a brighter tomorrow and know that He will not leave you comfortless; He will come to you.


References:

Robinson, Stephen E. Believing Christ. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company. 1992. Print.