Gratitude
-
Mass Trauma: 5 Steps to Protecting Your Mental Health
We are currently suffering a global mass trauma. Even if we don’t come down with COVID 19, we live under the threat of it. Living in fear is one of the primary precursors to PTSD. I did a little research and quickly found that primary and secondary stressors can cause significant challenges to one’s mental health. For many of us, the daily news tally of the dead and the enforced quarantine is a primary stressor. For others, add to this contracting the disease or watching a loved one struggle and perhaps die, is an even greater primary stressor. The secondary stressors are beginning to add up. Children feel the loss…
-
How to Have Gratitude without Faking It
My ability to have gratitude has grown with my capacity to tell myself the truth. I used to think that offering the sacrifice of praise that the book of James recommends meant I had to pretend to be thankful for some really awful things. In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 we read In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. So occasionally I would wind up my thanksgiving machine and thank God for things for which to this day I am not thankful. What I have since learned about the sovereign hand of God and gratefulness is life-changing, but really could only come at with the…
