Thanks Be To God:

Expressing Gratitude and Keeping Alive the Energy of Hope

During this Thanksgiving season, amidst the rankling noise over starting Black Friday on Thursday afternoon, there may even be opportunity for a quick thanks to life, God, family and friends.

But, should you be interested in a boost to your health and well-being, you will take expressing thanks more seriously.   In the evolving field of positive psychology, the expression of gratitude is gaining respect as one of the more powerful ways that people can gain (or regain) more satisfying lives. 

Prayers of thanksgiving before a meal are, of course, a habitual means of identifying appreciation – for God's gifts of food, life and health.   But let me identify two forms of giving thanks that research has found have the strongest positive impact on a person’s health and well-being and then you can muse on your own over their relationship to dinner-prayer.

The other day my wife and I were enjoying lunch with a group of friends and we were talking about notes of appreciation and how it felt as good to send them as to receive them.  One of my friends mentioned that his father-in-law would sit down every year at Thanksgiving and write a heart-felt letter expressing gratitude to somebody from his past.  I mentioned that one of the most satisfying things that I had done several years ago was to write to Hank, a very good older friend and colleague, thanking him in explicit detail for his service in WWII as a Marine officer who was in the first wave ashore during two major Pacific islands landings.  He thanked me with appreciation for the letter.  When he died several years later, I was surprised by how much my expression of thanks to him was repaid many times over in my own feeling of personal thankfulness that I had written that letter to Hank -- when he was alive.

Scientific research supports my experience of feeling positive emotional benefits when writing a letter of gratitude, but the number one activity that gratitude research identifies as beneficial is the keeping of a gratitude journal.   The research outcomes are consistent in identifying that keeping a gratitude-journal leads to the longest-term increased feelings of happiness and the lowest levels of stress and depression.  In the classes I have taught over the past few years I always encourage students to keep gratitude-journals -- but I get few takers.  But a few months ago one of my older-adult students said that a few years ago when life was particularly difficult for her she began to write every night about something for which she was thankful.  She said it made a very positive difference in her emotions.  But when she felt better she tended not to be as regular in her journaling.  

Something about what she was saying clicked in my own mind.  Suddenly I realized that two years ago when both my wife and I were undergoing cancer treatment at the same time and having a difficult time keeping our spirits up, what we did was really a variation of a gratitude journal.  We began what we called “Evenings”.   Every day we would each look for a picture, a clipping or a book from our past and write some comments about how important that “treasure” from our history together was to us then and now.  In the evening before dinner we would then sit down and read what we had written and share the pictures, poem or book that had fostered our written comments.   It is difficult to measure the overall positive impact of our “Evenings” on our improving health, but I recall how very, very emotionally important were those searches (for pictures, etc.), the writings, and especially our evening sharing-together time during those severely dark days. 

It was such a powerful experience that I thought then that we would continue “Evenings” forever.  But as we regained our health and our usual activities, “Evenings” became less frequent and finally stopped altogether.  The health-giving energy of hope that came from those “Evenings” shared was now kept sufficiently alive by our encounters with ordinary life, family, friends and church.

In retrospect, I have become aware that change is what often seems to define aging.  So I am comforted in knowing that when difficult times come again, as they surely will, my wife and I can draw on our tried and true way of expressing our thankfulness – together -- for all that God has given us.

Bruce