“Gratitude to God is to accept everything, even my problems, with joy.”
This quotation is by Mother Teresa, a person known to have been someone who gave of herself as an individual and through the charitable organizations she founded to assist people who were experiencing some of the most difficult situations. She and others in those organizations helped people who were living in poverty, provided care to people dying from terminal illnesses, and in many other ways endeavored to treat people in need with dignity. And that work continues.
Even though I know from personal experience and from the reading I’ve done that all people are faced with difficulties and challenges from time to time, I often struggle to accept that reality. At times I feel some shame about this, especially when I think of the dire situations that many people endure in comparison to the difficulties I’ve experienced. In fact, the women and men whom I admire and respect most—both those who lived in the past whom I’ve learned about through historical accounts as well as people in the present—faced adversity with courage and perseverance.
In her quote, Mother Teresa speaks of gratitude. As I’ve written in other posts, I believe being thankful for and not taking for granted the many positive aspects of our lives is something we should be mindful of. It’s easy to be thankful for that which our ego wants. The challenge comes when there are occurrences that our ego doesn’t want—that is when our resistance gets in the way of being thankful. Mother Teresa not only expresses gratitude, but gratitude even for her problems, and not just acceptance, but acceptance with joy.
Meaningful change usually requires taking steps—one step at a time, as we often hear. The first step is to endeavor to become more accepting. The next step is to work toward recognizing that we need to be thankful even for problems when they occur because they are part of our life path and help us to grow and change in positive ways. After being able to do that, we will be more ready to take the third step of accepting our problems with joy. It very likely will take time to complete each step, and that’s OK. We need to be patient with ourselves. And we need to remember that every step we take matters.