All my Gratitude

    January is quickly coming to a close and before we know it, it will be 2023. It's strange to think that we've been in a pandemic for almost two years now. I remember 2020 being to slowest year I've ever experienced but it seems like things are picking up again, or at least they are for me. I've been very cold but enjoying it. Autumn is my favorite but I love winter too. I hope it doesn't go by too quickly and it gets hot again. I'm trying to enjoy the days, to live life slowly. I want to be better about appreciating everything in it's season. Come summer, that resolution might nullify but this is the year my childhood comes to an end. By this time next year, I'll be married and in a place of our own. I'll be paying all kinds of bills and I won't be spending this much time with my family. I want to enjoy it. As much as I've longed for independence and to ability to create my home, I'm rather fond of the home I'm in now and it's weird to think that everything will be different. With that said, I am excited for the future, I just don't want it to come too quickly.

    Funnily enough, I feel like that ties in a bit to what I want to write today. Since Passion, I have been obsessed with a song called Gratitude by Brandon Lake. Genuinely, it's been on repeat, though I'm trying not to overdo it because I never want to stop singing it. It's such a beautiful picture of worship and our relationship with our creator. He's so big and we're so small. There's nothing we could bring that would be worthy enough but He loves us anyway. He wants a relationship with us anyway. Brandon Lake does a session with Natalie Grant (another one of my favorite artists) and she talks about how there was a study done where they found that gratitude and anxiety cannot exist in the brain at the same time. As someone interested in psychology, I think that this is so cool. It's a beautiful testimony to God's perfect and intelligent design. We have immune systems to fight illness, metabolisms to process the energy we need to survive, neural pathways to keep everything working. Everything is in it's place and working together to keep us alive. 

    Mental illness has become prevalent in society today and the pandemic hasn't helped in the least. We've seen incredibly high rates of depression and anxiety, the increase being over twenty five percent world-wide since 2020 (here's the link to the article I found concerning this). I have no idea what kind of impact this will have on the generations today and how we move forward. Some days it feels like we don't have a future for things to be complicated, though I believe there is, and I don't know how we come back from this. As a Christian, I see such a need for God in this world because He's the best answer that I can come up with. Whether you're a Christian or not though, He created us with the ability to fight anxiety. We choose gratitude. We choose to look at the bright side and be thankful for everything we have, even if all we can think of is the breath in our lungs. We may not have a choice over the season of life we're in, our circumstances, or the craziness happening in the world right now, but we can choose our outlook. We can restructure our brain by practicing gratitude daily, resulting in stronger neural pathways, and eventually the creation of a permanent grateful and positive nature inside of us. In the same way, we can rewire our brains so that they only process negative information. You choose. It's up to you how you live this miracle of life and how you view the world around you.

    Worship is mentioned over and over in the Bible. It's in the old and new testament, hundreds of times. It's an outward expression of gratitude and acknowledgement of who God is and what He's done. He's worthy of it too. Putting on my worship playlist is any easy way for me to get my eyes off of myself and my feelings (granted, I struggle with a lot of worship music today but that's a topic for another day). David and many other writers lament all the time in the Psalms. It's so full of highs and lows but that's how life is. Continually, the psalmists remind themselves to praise the Lord. One chapter cries out to God when it feels like He's forsaken the author and the next sings His praises. Because it's a form of gratitude, I think worship is of the utmost importance. It's focusing not just on the good but on the One who is good, the One who is in control of the situations that bring us to our knees. It's to rally our souls, to posture our hearts in the right place. Psalm 34:9 says, "Revere the Eternal, you His saints, for those who worship Him will possess everything important in life." God demonstrates His love for us in our existence and in the death of Jesus, the least we could do is be thankful and give Him praise for it. Like it says in the song, we have one response. In Revelation 4, it talks about how all the people around God could do was fall on their knees and declare God's worth and holiness. I want to see God like that, to be so in awe of my creator that all I can do is lift m hands and praise Him. 

    This is a little weird to talk about. A lot of religions sound like a cult more than anything else and Christianity is no exception. It's awkward and hard to explain if you have no relationship with God. But, I believe He's the only one who can give us true peace and true joy and this world needs that. I don't want to be so caught up in myself and the things I'm feeling and experiencing that I can't think about anything else. I don't want to be fixated on the negative. I don't want to buy into the fear and anxiety that is running rampant in the world. I want to spend my days thanking God for every good thing. I want to worship Him for His holiness, for who He is. I want to worship Him until the end of my days, to give Him all my gratitude. If all I have to give is a hallelujah, then so be it. I'd rather rather offer what little I have than chase what the world has to offer. It's our choice to get up and praise the Lord or wallow in what we feel. We have to power and potential to do so much with our lives but only if we live with gratitude and in step with our Creator. 

"I will praise the Eternal in every moment through every situation.

    Whenever I speak, my words will always praise Him.

Everything within me wants to pay tribute to Him.

    Whenever the poor and humble hear of His greatness, the will celebrate too.

Come and lift up the Eternal with me;

    Let's praise His name together!

When I needed the Lord, I looked for Him;

    I called out to Him and He heard me and responded.

He came and rescued me from everything that made me so afraid.

Look to Him and shine,

    so shame will never contort your faces.

This poor soul cried, and the Eternal heard me.

    He rescued me from my troubles.

The messenger of the Eternal God surrounds everyone who walks with Him and is there to protect and rescue us.

Taste of His goodness; see how wonderful the Eternal truly is.

    Anyone who puts trust in Him will be blessed and comforted.

Revere the Eternal, you His saints, for those who worship Him will possess everything important in life."

Psalm 34:1-9

Yours Truly

Rey

p.s. For anyone interested, I found this article really helpful on gratitude and anxiety: The Neuroscience of Gratitude and How It Affects Anxiety & Grief.