There is power in Gratitude. It has worked miracles in my life. If you had known me ten years ago you would be amazed. Since most of you don’t I feel a brief illustration of my life will help you understand.

You see as a youth I developed a very painful hateful way of thinking about myself and the world around me. Outwardly you would have seen a gracious smiling slightly timid boy eager to be a part of this world. The truth would be far sinister. With every thought, every action, I would criticize what I had done or said, or even what I may have thought. One seeming mistake would lead to months of beration. I can remember night after night ruminating…toiling with my stupidity. I was indeed my own worst enemy.

There would have been no way anyone could have know. No signs. Nothing outwardly that gave the hint that inside I was dying. I got good grades. I had good friends. I wore a mask so perfectly crafted that nothing could reveal my pain.

By the time I was 12 I had held a gun to my throat a dozen times. Inside I was a never-ending tear…

I had been taught early in life that mans purpose in life was to have joy and I wondered why it so often alluded me. I found ways to cope. Ways to distract myself. Albeit certainly not the most healthy or redeemable of ways, but they kept me alive and at times it seemed that is all I had to hold on to.

After a difficult break-up at the end of high-school I broke. My shield had been cracked. My pain had been revealed if only slightly. I was told that I had depression and probably had had it for some time. Perhaps my entire life.

This would be the beginning of a great and beautiful change in my life. It had a label. My pain finally had a name! And so I began to distance myself from that name. To tear myself, little by little, from what I had so often felt was unconquerable. There was hope and I felt it deep in the shadows of my soul.

It would be the most trying difficult time of my life. In fact it would take the better part of the next ten years to make the headway that I have made. And still I have so far to go, but I see now more joy than gloom, more hope than pain, more love than anything else.

Looking back I still shudder at the pain and the absolute hopelessness one feels as they struggle through depression. It is a very lonely pain. A pain that no other person can truly understand. A hurt so deep that dying often seems the only way out, but I take hope now for anyone that struggles as I have. We have been given a most powerful tool. Gratitude. This tiny word can change your life. It has mine. In a way that is difficult to express in words. Without a doubt it is the one tool that has made the greatest impact on the way I think, the way I see the world, and how I feel about myself.

I started small and struggled often…who would think it could be so hard to find things to be grateful for.  Every thought of appreciation and gratitude I had was followed by several others of rebuke and criticism. But it was a start. It was that mustard seed that we so often hear about. I had planted the seed of gratitude in my heart and it could do nothing but grow. I nurtured it as often as my weakness would allow. I wrote, however infrequently in a gratitude journal. I sent letters to those I loved. I spent time in places and with people that I already knew I appreciated. And from those small things others arose. They were like magnets bringing me more and more to be grateful for, more to appreciate, more to feel good about.

The great think about appreciation is that it is a word wrapped in love. As you allow more and more thoughts of gratitude into your life you’ll find that love will come like a billowing cloud. And all the things you’ve wanted for your life will become evident around you. Peace, love, tranquility, and calm will flow easily and you will find true happiness and joy closer each day.

This is a guest post from GoGravel