The Seeds of Gratitude

I sat in the car stunned by what I had just heard. I had answered a few questions regarding movement and had walked the hallway as instructed. The visit to the Neurologist was intended to gain understanding as to why I was limping on my right side and finding my right hand a bit stiff. “You have Parkinson’s disease,” he said. I was stunned. I knew about Parkinson’s from the work I had done in the Pharmaceutical business. I had missed my symptoms entirely. As I sat there in my car, thinking, my mind went diving to its lowest depths. The New Year of 2007 would arrive in just a few days and I had plans for bright new beginnings; not a deteriorating disease that would ultimately end in death (my thinking, not a prognosis). I called my daughter and told her the diagnosis and said: “now I know how I’ll die.” (Not a loving way to share with her.) I sat there weeping my own demise and the future of miserable challenges I would face. Suddenly, I recalled the statement that “fortune telling is not one of the Spiritual gifts.” I thanked God out loud for reminding me that I wasn’t the beginning and the ending (alpha and omega) of my story. Just uttering those words of gratitude opened then a new vista; a new vision of possibilities that I had not previously embraced. Still heavy with grief and sadness, I started the engine and pulled from the parking lot onto the street back home. I didn’t know the future, but I did believe that the God who had made me and had saved me for eternity was the same God who was going to be with me every day going forward. That one seed of gratitude, I discovered, blossomed into moments of hope as I navigated to streets to my home. The thoughts sustained me until the next challenge I would face emerged from my storehouse of potential negativity. I learned and am still learning that the seeds of gratitude yield a harvest of hope even in the depths of a storm!