I think I've probably been ungrateful most of my life, but I was only aware of it from 2007-2010. When we were in Brazil in 2007 I read one of the few books I brought with us, "You Can Never Get Enough of What You Don't Need - The Quest for Contentment" by Mary Ellen Edmunds
(I was feeling pretty deprived in Brazil as we lived in a home with a tiny kitchen and I washed clothes by hand AND I had to light the oven and stove top with a match! That was the clincher for me, I felt like I had gone back in time to the 1920s!) So this book was helpful for me then and I tried to be content, but still knew I hadn't really fixed my attitude. Back in the US, I tried to focus on the positive, but then negative kept sneaking up behind me and biting me in the shorts. I tried making lists of my blessings and things I was grateful for and reading through it or adding to it every night, but that didn't help me know how to deal with the things in my life that I hated, things that did not fit my description of "blessings" and that I was ungrateful for. "Yeah, got my list of good things... so what do I do with all the things on my bad things list?"
Fast forward three years, October 2010 and we are in Costa Rica on a family adventure for a mere 3 months. We were 2 weeks into it and the "this is fun!" vibe was now gone and I was thinking "Ok... So... um, when are we going home?" Corey told me I was being ungrateful, and he was right, but I didn't know how to be grateful. Making lists were a token effort but didn't yield any grateful fruit for me. President Monson spoke on Gratitude during that Conference, so I really knew that if the prophet was talking about this and calling me to repentance, I better figure this out. Thus began my search for gratitude once again...
I'm thankful for an angel on earth in Costa Rica who shared with me her secret to happiness - She was a divorced but now married mother with 7 kids (like me), and even though our budget was tight, it looked quite lavish compared to the difficult circumstances she was facing. BUT, and here's where I was curious, SHE WAS HAPPY! And I watched her, and it didn't seem like she was just faking it or pretending, she was genuinely happy. I wanted to be like her. I asked her how she was so happy and grateful in the face of all her problems. Her answer was along the lines of "Well, I know that God loves me, so it must be a blessing." When those trials come, those unblessings start to pop up everywhere, tell yourself that they are blessings, blessings to give you experience, to teach you, to help you not just to stretch yourself, but to do better and BECOME better, to become grateful.
So our plans in Costa Rica changed and we had an extended trip of 5 more months to Chile, with her help, I kept remembering it was "A grand adventure" ~ there were difficult times and wonderful times, highs and lows, peaks and valleys, like we all experience everyday in our lives, but I had learned how to be grateful for the things I hated, cause I could tell myself "I know God loves me (and that is True with a capital "T") and so, it must be a blessing"
So Remember the Key to Happiness and Goodness is ~ GRATITUDE ~
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