Magic Carpet

Sometime around last February, I began thanking Hashem for having MS. I couldn’t get the words right, tears instead of phrases came tumbling from my mouth. After 40 some years of hating what the disease had kept me from being, stopped me from doing, and living with almost total dependence on the kindness of others, life is mostly changed after discovering the tool of gratitude.

Gratitude changes everything. No longer are my thoughts filled with sorrow, pity, and longing to be something else. The simple act of expressing gratitude for the thing I hated most about my life opened the door for miracles to come in and replace all existing distress.

How could I know expressing thanks could be so powerful? Now, I can understand what’s happening. By expressing the thanks for what I could not see as positive revealed that side of my disease. No longer is it an element to keep me from the life that I want, now it is the major fix for the life I have.

What seems absurd and almost laughable now seems like a magic carpet floating me above what is natural.

When I come to Hashem with gratitude for what seems to be only painful, it immediately uplifts me beyond nature. No longer can the inconveniences and stresses of the disease even touch my psyche.

By not buying into what seems to be misery, I choose another life. I change the tape running in my head and exchange it for one of joy and potential.

When I refuse to deny myself very human eyesight and only see the bad and instead see only what is good about this disease, the attitude changes the very nature of my nature. No longer am I stuck in looking at the negative trials and tribulations of disease, but instead I see the joy of Hashem’s love.

He surrounds me with people who can lovingly assist and impact this life so that it is not the disability I see first. First I look at the gifts and the abundance of Torah learning and the reality of Love. No longer am I stuck in a world where “can’t”  is prevalent. Now “I can, I will, I have” are the earmarks of this life.

Take the chance of thanking, praising, and loving Hashem for the very things you don’t have and you can’t do. Before long you, too, will have a magic carpet lifting you above nature. This is the world where you can be effective and powerful with what you have and how you have it. Give up wanting what you don’t have and spend that time loving what you do have. This tool which is so beautifully described in The Garden of Gratitude is life-changing stuff. Thanks to Rabbi Arush this tool can be used by everyone to gain control of life and open the gates of nature so that you can pass through and rise above.

Although my experience is with disease, I imagine this tool works just as well for every lack and ailment and failure we perceive about our lives.

Six months of application changed 40 years of sorrow and longing. Healing yourself by thanking Hashem will be achieved by daily personal prayer, honesty, and teshuva. Go deep and long. The changes keep happening.