“It is relatively easy to feel grateful when good things are happening and life is going the way we want it to. Even then, we often take things for granted. It feels so good to take a moment to express our appreciation to other people, to the earth, to our higher power, to life. A much greater challenge is to get in touch with gratitude when we are going through a difficult time, or life is not going the way we think it should. At these times, we are more likely to be feeling hurt, confused, or resentful, which is perfectly natural. Gratitude is the last thing that would occur to us at such a moment.
It’s interesting, though, that after going through a difficult time, in retrospect we can often see that there was something important and necessary about that experience. We may not arrive at this perspective until months or even years later, but eventually we can see that there was some important lesson learned, a deepening of our wisdom, an awakening, or perhaps a new door that opened in our life as a result of events that seemed negative at the time.”
Shakti Gawain, in an essay entitled, “Being Grateful During Life’s Challenges”, in the book “Gratitude, A Way of Life”by Louise Hay and Friends
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
