You Matter - Chapter 4 & 5 Gratitude and Cabbage Leaves

Chapter 4: Gratitude

Now here is where Dr P and I part, but not so much on the over all outcome as the details of where it came from. Dr P states that we have to be grateful for not only our pain but the reason for it. A similar approach like Merlin Crothers’, Prison to Praise. I disagree, I believe that we should be thankful for God using our pain to bring about good, not that we are grateful for the pain. I kind of see a correlation between being grateful for the actual cause of our pain, but I think that is an over simplification and I don’t think God intended us to ever thank Him for our hurts, however, I do think He wants us to thank Him for using our hurts to make us better Christians.

She talks about Corrie Ten Boone and the awe-inspiring story of their incarceration during the Holocaust and how Corrie and her sister learned to be thankful for the fleas they had to endure, because it kept the Nazi’s out of their barracks.

I completely agree with Dr. P that gratitude is the only way to overcome bitterness. It is only when we can learn to be grateful (make a choice to be grateful) for what we have learned and overcome that we can began to use that knowledge to help others around us.

Gratitude is the key to unlocking a more loving heart and the one holding the key is the pain we overcome.

It is only when we are grateful that we become immune to the poisons of discord, discouragement, and criticism. You cannot place blame or hate others for having what you do not, if you are grateful for what you have or even for the strength you have gained by surviving some great pain.

God’s Grace never flows more freely than through the river of gratitude. When we are grateful, is when amazing things can happen.

Chapter 5: Cabbage Leaves

This chapter is short and just emphasizes that we all need someone in our lives who can look at us and see our potential instead of the mistakes we are currently making. When someone tells you they believe in you, it tends to make you believe more in yourself. The reverse is also true in the question of how are we relating to others. Are we speaking to their potential, or judging their current status as the basis of what we believe their future is? We need to make sure that we are speaking to people’s potential even more than we are judging their actions of the moment.

After reading this chapter, I find that I am not sure what to think about all this. Although I do agree with the basic outline I know that in my personal life I struggled and struggled to find someone, anyone who would “mentor” me as the book suggested and no one in my church would. Several times, I have been turned down or just let drift as not mattering enough to be fostered and that has certainly affected some of my own perceptions. Very few have ever spoke to me of my potential and future as anything other than what a weird and screwed up person I am currently. I have been judged and found “not worthy” for far too many years. Years which I had to have a heart attack to overcome. I find now, that I don’t need that encouragement anymore, nor do I need the approval. God speaks to me as clearly as He does to the greatest prophet or saint and as long as I can hear Him clearly then I am in a good place despite what ANYONE else would say.

I have someone now that I feel fairly comfortable going to if I REALLY need advise or assistance, but it is not so much as a mentoring system as a sounding board system. God has spent a lot of time and effort into teaching me to be independent, so I am grateful to have a sounding board to go to when confused or hurt, but He has also spent most of my life shaping me into a person who can also go it “alone” with no one on my side but Him. More and more since the heart attack.