“However you may not know grace is present, because you have conditioned the way you want it to come, for example, like thunder or lightning, with all the drama, rumbling, and pretense of that. “Grace isn’t something that you go for, as much as it’s something you allow,” wrote John-Roger, the founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. Growing up in Greece, I was used to a simple blessing before each meal, sometimes a silent one, even though I wasn’t brought up in a particularly religious household. It simply means “I receive.” When I was in Dharamsala, India, every meal started with a simple prayer. When I was in Tokyo in 2013 for the launch of HuffPost Japan I loved learning to say itadakimasu before every meal. I love saying grace-even silently-before meals and when I travel around the world, observing different traditions. This is the only way we can find purpose in pain and loss, and the only way to keep returning to gratitude and grace. What I learned through it is that we are not on this earth to accumulate victories, or trophies, or experiences, or even to avoid failures, but to be whittled and sandpapered down until what’s left is who we truly are. Relationships had broken, illnesses had come, death had taken people I loved. My mother had once given me a quotation from Aeschylus that spoke directly to these hours: “And even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.” At some point, I accepted the pain falling drop by drop and prayed for the wisdom to come. Dreams of my baby gradually faded, but for a time it seemed as if the grief itself would never lift. Staggering through a minefield of hard questions and partial answers, I began to make my way toward healing. As I lay awake during the many sleepless nights that followed, I began to sift through the shards and splinters, hoping to find reasons for my baby’s stillbirth. Losing a baby brings up so many unspoken fears: Will I ever be able to carry a baby to term? Will I ever be able to become a mother? Everything felt broken inside. We carry them in our dreams and in our souls and in our every cell. Women know that we do not carry our unborn babies only in our wombs. Read Robert Emmons take on five myths about gratitude. Not very grateful? Check out the six habits of highly grateful people.Įxplore what gets in the way of saying "thanks." Join us on June 7, 2014, in Richmond, CA, for the Greater Good Gratitude Summit. The baby’s eyes were not meant to open he died in my womb before he was born. Early one morning, barely awake myself, I asked out loud, “Why won’t they open?” I knew then what was only later confirmed by the doctors. Days became weeks, and weeks turned into months. Night after night I could see that the baby-a boy-was growing within me, but his eyes would not open. But night after night, I had restless dreams. I was thirty-six and ecstatic at the prospect of becoming a mother. The distance between them happening and not happening is grace.Īnd then there are the disasters that did happen, that leave us broken and in pain.įor me, such a moment was losing my first baby. I find that I’m not only grateful for all the blessings in my life, I’m also grateful for all that hasn’t happened-for all those close shaves with “disaster” of some kind or another, all the bad things that almost happened but didn’t. According to a study by researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida, having participants write down a list of positive events at the close of a day-and why the events made them happy-lowered their self-reported stress levels and gave them a greater sense of calm at night. Gratitude exercises have been proven to have tangible benefits. From the GGSC to your bookshelf: 30 science-backed tools for well-being.
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