When feeling insignificant, remember this....

                                                      Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash

The world has billions of people all doing their own thing.  Some get recognized for their efforts and some don’t. Those of us who don’t may feel insignificant. We may think, "What have I got to offer?" We feel small in this space populated with so many people (past and present). And all we want to do is make a mark on the world... we want our lives to matter.  However, we are overwhelmed when we think of the amount of people who have, now, and will live. So many that it is comparable to the sand of the sea: countless.

In a culture caught up in competition and comparison, we may feel that even though we may have talents and abilities, what we have to offer is not good enough. I felt this way. I was always the shy girl in to corner that nobody noticed. I felt that my ideas, comments, actions, and accomplishments didn’t matter. And worse, I lived like I believed it. Last year I wrote a song called “My Gethsemane” that describes that very feeling. In the third verse I wrote:

Now on Earth, not sure of the task

The trial and strain I desperately mask

Am I of worth in this great plan?

Faith and trust, do not know if I can

My downfall? Lack of faith and trust.  Just like most of us, I have been hurt many times in my life. However, I allowed my lack of faith and trust to weaken with every hurt. I didn't trust people or situations and therefore didn't believe I was wanted. I allowed myself to feel more and more insignificant each time I faced a failure or rejection. This thinking only hurt me because it wasn't true. I was slowly self-destructing not giving myself a chance to reach my full potential. That is, until I came to realize something very important: All I am and do does matters.

I learned that to leave your mark in the world, you start with just one person.

A few years ago, I received a gift from the school district I was working for. It was a key chain shaped as a starfish with the words "One Person Can Make a Difference." Inside the box, was the following story:

One morning a man walked along a beach covered with thousands of starfish that had washed up during a storm. Now they lay dying in the sun. He saw a young girl picking up the starfish one by one and tossing them into the sea. As he approached her he count't help but ask, "Why bother? There are too many of them. You won't make much of a difference." She picked up another starfish and tossed it into the water. Then she turned to the man and said, "I made a difference to that one."

As we go through life, we never know who we influence. I think we don't truly grasp the reality of the difference we make. This past year I taught a student who was struggling. I decided to look at the situation as an opportunity to treat someone with love, patience, and hope. Some days were tough and others were good. At the end of the year, I read from his mother how through my choices to treat him as Christ would, I did more that I realized. She wrote:

"Miss Ward has taken my son who started kindergarten at level zero because he was so delayed. My son is now on track and ready to end the year above where he should be. I have watched him grow and learn so much from Miss Ward and I couldn't ask for a better teacher to teach my son. She has made a major impact on my family's life and we can't tell her enough how much we appreciate her."

It humbles me each time I read these sweet words this mother wrote. Again it starts with just one....

Christ, our Savior and great example, never allowed feelings of insignificance stop him from loving on each person, one at a time. He knew who he was and the importance of his service. At the beginning of his mortal ministry Jesus returned to his home town to minister to, or serve, his people. While hearing a sermon, he stood up and declared He was the Messiah. The people could and would not believe what he was saying.  Wasn't he the carpenter Joseph's son? However, he continued to serve to those who would allow him to. He focused on one person at a time.

The world has us thinking we need recognition to have any kind of significance in this world. It tells us that in order to be someone we must win at competition and be loved by all. However, Christ taught us different. He taught that it is by the small and simple acts of love that we truly make a difference in this world. When you show love one by one, you can feel the true impact you have in this world because to that "one", you just may have changed their world.

The Healing Effects of Gratitude

Thank you is a common phrase in just about every language. Some languages have multiple ways to say it. Most people can say thank you not only in their home language but in at least one other. It was one of the first phrases I knew when learning German. It seems to be one of the core words to learn when starting to learn a new language. I wondered why. It doesn’t seem like an easier word to say or even learn. Maybe it’s because “Thank You” is a nice thing to say. Or maybe it’s something more.

Since we were young, we have been told to say thank you because it is the polite the thing to do. Sadly, I have noticed that even though we are taught to say thank you, as we age, people seem to say it with empty meaning or not at all. Gratitude is a virtue that is increasingly diminishing in our society. Stress and entitlement replace it.  At the same time, there is alarming amounts of illness that plague our earth. The power in the simple phrase “Thank You” has become more real to me lately. In searching for healing with my own illnesses and tragedies, I found out that gratitude is not just a polite thing to do, it has amazing healing powers.

There is much research that stress is a root cause of many diseases.  And if it isn’t the root cause, well, it sure contributes to it. Stress on the body happens in a few ways: physical, emotional, and mental. We can experience stress even when we are unaware that it is happening. In his book, “When the Body Says No”, Dr. Gabor Mate defines stress as a “biological process, a wide-ranging set of events in the body, irrespective of cause or of subjective awareness.  Stress consists of the internal alteration- visible or not- that occur when the organism perceives a threat to its existence or well-being.”[i]  Or in other words, when the body feels threatened by a virus, situation, action, thought, person, etc. we experience stress. The body is amazing and protects itself by telling the immune system to start the stress response. Sometimes this is the “fight or flight” mode or in case of a virus or toxin, the body signals the T-fighter cells to kick into action. This is a great thing when we get right to solving the threat. But, in today’s society we live in our stress. We are either taught to “tough it out”, are bombarded with toxins in the air we breathe and food we eat, and/or don’t have the problem solving skills necessary to ease the burden. We just go on, day to day, in a state of stress that to us, feels normal.

The problem with living in our stress is that it keeps cortisol levels at a constant high and we eventually experience chronic inflammation throughout the body. This inflammation leads to heart disease (the number one killer in the U.S.A.), cancer, depression, anxiety, auto-immune diseases, and just about every other disease we know of. It alters the balance of the gut flora (the bacteria) in our intestines. About 80% of the immune system is in the gut. These bacteria interact with the immune system to help keep us healthy. Part of their job is to signal the Tregg cells in the immune system.  These cells go in and calm down the T-Fighter cells so the body can go back down into a state of rest. So when the good bacteria are disrupted, things can go awry with our bodies and inflammation can persist. This is just what has happened in my body.

I have been living in a state of stress for who knows how long. I, too, was a victim to our everyday “normal” living. Like most of us, I experienced some rough patches in my life. I thought I was eating correctly but wasn’t. (Our Western Diet has us confused with what is healthy.  They prepackage foods and slap a label saying it has the healthy benefits of this or that. We buy it and as a result, our bodies struggle to process it causing inflammation.) And, I’ve allowed others to treat me poorly. I allowed it because I learned to be a peacemaker and didn’t want to cause contention. This is ironic because there definitely was contention within my own mind. To manage the stress, I pushed my feeling down and never expressed them. I thought they’d just go away. But I was very wrong. Feelings just don’t go away. They come out in some form or another. For me, it was my health.

My poor choices caught up with me and I have been struggling with some health issues.  My neck and shoulders are often tight and stiff. In fact, I have woken up a few times noticing my jaw clenched or my shoulders tensed. When I exercise I notice my body tense and this is supposed to be something that relieves stress.  I have been frustrated with how my body is reacting. But it’s just trying to do what it needs to survive. I am working on learning to relax but this is easier said than done! Needless to say, I have struggled in the healing process.

Neale Donald Walsh said, “The struggle ends when gratitude begins.” Just like myself, we all struggle. That in inevitable in this mortal existence. Struggling can be good. It’s when learning occurs. But when it goes on too long, exhaustion, frustration, anxiety and depression set in. I have gotten there a few times (or more). Sadly, this is the breaking point for many and they end up giving up. I don’t think it’s because they want to, rather, they just don’t have the knowledge and tools to solve their problems. They (as I did) ask: How do I gain strength to preserver? How can I find peace? How do I heal from all the wounds rooted from my tragedy and the consequences that caused me to struggle? Mr. Walsh summed it up: we practice gratitude.

On the wall in my front room hangs the saying, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues…. but the parent of all the others.” Who said it, I don’t know.  However, it has a great impact. To be the “parent of all others” means that all other virtues stem from this single quality. “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. . . . Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”[ii]

We often label emotions as negative or positive. But, it reality, emotions are chemical reactions to the way the body is feeling in conjunction to the circumstances. When we have feelings such as anger, fear, anxiety, and insecurity we produce cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine, the chemicals our body makes when we are stressed. However, if we take those feelings and process them in a healthy way, we can turn them into feelings of forgiveness, trust, peace, and security. These feelings produce the chemicals opioid neuropeptides (a.k.a endorphins), serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. These chemicals work together to lower our stress levels and make us happy. Gratitude is the key that opens the door to process our anger into forgiveness, fear into trust, anxiety into peace, and insecurity into security.   

In my daily prayers, I thank my Heavenly Father for all the little things I have been given. I thank Him for the struggles I have encountered and the things I have learned because of them. I talk to Him about a plan to make difficult things lighter and ask Him to shoulder that burden with me. I thank Him for His support and growth in my life. I thank Him for all He blesses me with including my talents, loved ones, job, experiences and opportunities, and so much more. With His help, I am learning to process stressful emotions into peaceful emotions through gratitude.

We are told in the scripture that gratitude it pleasing to God. While thanking Him for all we have, it also shows faith in what we hope for. It acts as a trust in God that He will grant unto us those things we mostly desire because we know that if they are good, we will receive them. Christ talked to the people in the Americas after His resurrection about how much our Heavenly Father loves us and wants to give us good things. He said, “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be open unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. Or what man is thereof you, who if his son ask bread, will give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”[iii]

I have been given some great ways to heal from not only my muscle tension but from a few other things I am working on. Gratitude has allowed me to improve my eating. I am so grateful for the beautiful array of good, wholesome, real food available.  I now eat mainly “clean”. No processed food. I am working to heal my gut and my immune system so I can manage stress more effectively. Since the body and mind work together this is a great piece in healing from the inside out.

Gratitude has also allowed me to share my feelings more instead of “keeping the peace”. There have been some difficult circumstances to deal with but I come out feeling better of myself. I have learned that if people don’t like what I have to say and can’t talk it out, it’s better to leave them in their opinion. As a result, I am gaining my voice and my confidence. I am healing.

Zig Ziglar, an author and emotional speaker, said, “Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.”  I have learned just that and more. Gratitude is healing. It allows one to gain power over their own life. It attracts forgiveness and promotes healing and growth. With each step we take with gratitude, we achieve small victories. When we put those small victories together we can achieve that which is great. And to me, that is why saying thank you is more than just a polite thing to do.  

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[i] Mate, Gabor M.D. When the Body Says No. Turner Publishing: Nashville, Tennessee, 2003. Page 28.

[ii] Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency (Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden, 1990), 218.

[iii] 3 Nephi 14: 7-11