THANKFUL THURSDAY by ZEBRAFINCH (guest blogger)

Thankfulness and gratitude are daily and simple because my daily life is centered around simple things. The idea of waking up from a comfortable bed, having my animals nearby, enjoying a simple routine of coffee and some time alone create a whole cycle of well-being. I have a chronic illness, but even so, the simple joy of being keeps me going.

I also get very sad about the illness or my life from time to time. In those cases, over time I have come to see gratitude, and the expression of thankfulness especially, to be a “reset” button. If my system stops, I need a tool to fix it. I can almost use thankful like a “restore point” the way a computer does, except that it moves me to a future point. Gratitude can take me to where I was in my heart before the problem, eliminate the problem or modify it. Then, I feel as though I have taken a sort of leap forward.

This is not a dramatic process for me. It was so subtle at first, that I missed the point for decades.

In healing from Lyme disease, one sees, as my doctor puts it, “three steps forward, two steps back.” But thankfulness as a regular exercise is not just about healing, sometimes it is just about life. Isn’t all of life about healing, really? It is about growing, perhaps most would agree. Even if you don’t reach for gratitude for healing, when is gratitude not useful as a reset? Being thankful changes things.