Valerie Minard

She looked around the room. “I could at least be grateful for this beautiful room that I’m in,” she said to herself. It was a small thing, but it got her thought moving in the right direction.

As she thought about other things she was grateful for, the mental fog lifted for the first time in months, and she felt some light come through. Once the light started to shine, it gained momentum and got brighter and brighter. It was like a little crack in the door, opening wider. When this kind of spiritual light touches you, Martha says, “thought starts to expand and that’s what happened to me. My thought of what I was grateful for actually began to expand.”

Her focus broadened to include more than the material things in her life. She began to be grateful for the day. Then her thought expanded to being grateful for the qualities expressed around her, toward her, and through her as a beloved child of the divine Father-Mother, God. This proved to be a turning point. As she continued, her attitude brightened.

Martha believes gratitude is a powerful form of prayer. Months of more petitionary prayer led her to this fresher way of praying, a way that worked better for her, with more spontaneity and grace. It enabled her to acknowledge and recognize God’s presence and goodness in her life. The whole process of focusing on gratitude, what it can do for her, the different aspects it takes, and how she lives it, has continued to play a very important role in the way Martha lives. Now if the tho-ught creeps in that she doesn’t have anything to be grateful for, she kicks it right out. She hasn’t been pulled back down since. — Spirituality.com, concluded