September 23, 2020

I'm ashamed to admit that I have been a murmurer many times in my life. Sometimes I am a very slow learner; but, here are a few things I have learned about murmuring.

1. It never solves anything!

2. It only makes you more miserable.

3. It can make others around you miserable.

4. It is selfish.

5. It supports the pity party of "why me".

I have also learned some things about the opposite attitude and in recent years I have been striving to make this attitude be my GO TO action now. That is to have an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE instead. Here are a few things I have learned about being grateful.

1. It is empowering because if we look for something to be grateful about in the midst of our trial or problem we will naturally look to God.

2. A grateful heart is a loving heart.

3. A grateful heart is a joyful heart.

4. Gratitude is contagious so it lifts and benefits those around you.

5. It opens doors to solutions. When we are looking to God He will help us and prompt us with solutions through the Holy Ghost.

6. By finding something good it helps us realize that things are NOT as bad as they may seem.

7. Gratitude is a choice!

8. Feeling gratitude can make us happy.

I am choosing to be grateful. I have had a great opportunity to prove this to myself. We have had a fairly stressful year in 2020. Coronavirus, quarantine and lock down and social distancing, face masks whenever you go out in public, riots, fires and evacuations in Oregon and on the west coast, and who knows what else may be going on in everyone's life. It is easy to complain and murmur and wallow in all of this stress OR we can look for the good that may have come out of all these things. Here are a few things I have found to be grateful for through all of this stress.

1. Steve and I were supposed to leave on our 2 year mission to New Zealand on the first of June. COVID caused that to be delayed to the end of August. The blessing we received from that delay was to help our grandson refinish a nice little apartment for him.

2. Our mission was delayed again with a TBA date. The blessing we received from that delay is we are now still home so we can be here for our granddaughter's wedding in October.

3. COVID has prevented people from going to Church. However, we have been practicing a Home Centered Church Supported model for over a year now and when COVID hit this practice went into full production mode. Yes, we miss seeing our friends, but we have grown spiritually every single day. We have a Zoom meeting with some family and friends each week to discuss our scripture study for that week. We take turns leading our discussion and even our grand-children get a turn to teach us. We have grown closer to each other and even expressed that we don't want our weekly Zoom meeting to go away when the time comes and we can finally go back to Church.

I could go on and on with the things I have found to be grateful for. Above all, a grateful heart is a peaceful heart. I have found myself completely at peace. When the fires were close and we feared the very real possibility of losing our home we felt at peace. We trusted in the Lord. We knew if we lost our house we would be OK. Yes, it would be hard and we would be sad, but it would not shake our faith.

We experienced a big loss over 10 years ago when the economy tanked and we lost our business and ultimately our house. It could have torn us apart. We could have blamed each other and/or God. We could have complained and turned to hate. We could have divorced and left the Church. We didn't do any of those things. We turned to each other for love and support. We trusted in God that He had something better in store for us. Our faith grew and our love for each other grew. He did indeed have something better in store for us and we are so grateful for the lessons we learned and the tremendous blessings we have received all because we lost our business.

Gratitude is a Choice. Choose to be grateful!!!

50Kylee Wilcox, Carol Bavlnka Hawkins and 48 others

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