Daughters of Promise November/December 2014 | Page 17

or

Gratitude
stress
give me

give me

“Corinne,

don’t touch that! A dog probably
peed there,” I reprimanded my six year old
daughter as we walked down a dirty sidewalk in our
neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY. “My eyes watch for
beauty!” she exclaimed to me. She would spot a
tiny patch of green grass and stop to literally stroke it,
while I usually saw concrete, garbage, or dog litter.
How can two people in the same surroundings see
two completely different things? It is all in what you
purpose to look for. And this, my friend, is a glimpse
into the core of what we call gratitude. No matter
what the circumstance you or I face, we are given a
choice to be grateful or to be stressed. Whatever we
are up against, we can choose to thank God for it.
Five years ago, I was intrigued when a friend from
church told me about a book in which the author

chose to heed the words in Ephesians 5:20 and thank
God for everything. In the weeks that followed, the
Holy Spirit kept impressing on me that I was to do this.
That was the beginning of a journey of God peeling
off layers of unredeemed junk in my life. It was also
what God used to keep me from going into a full
blown depression. Little did I know that in asking me
to thank Him for everything, God was actually giving
me the tools to face some of the hardest challenges
of my life.
“Still I will trust” was what came to me on January 1,
2010. I sensed that that was the theme God had for
me that new year. Just nine days later, in a sterile
hospital room, I gave birth to our lifeless, 24 week old
daughter, Elizabeth Charis. While in the fresh grief
of that stillbirth, we were pulled into a very delicate,

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