For those of you who missed it, I issued an invitation two weeks ago to join me in a November gratitude challenge. You can record your gratitude in any way that works for you, but our “It is Well with My Soul” Gratitude Journal is on a special sale in honor of the occasion. CLICK HERE to get yours for $12, or $10 each when you grab some friends and buy 5 or more.

Here we are, day one of my November gratitude challenge. I hope that my weekly posts about the experience will provide us both some accountability as we work to cultivate gratitude in our daily lives. I am counting on the promise of one of the quotes I chose to include in the journal, that, “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.” –Melodie Beattie

With three boys five and under in my home, I’ve never yearned for the promise of turning chaos to order more. Mothering young children has challenged me in ways that I never expected and the overstimulation and the lack of sleep and financial struggles and the daily battle against the mundane has left my gratitude muscles in a state of atrophy.

I know they need to be strengthened again and nothing has illustrated why it matters so much as the rollercoaster ride that was 2022.

Let me tell you a tale of two years (both of them were my 2022).

In one of them, we finally achieved our goal (several years in the making) of buying an investment property. We locked in a very low interest rate on a beautiful townhouse 5 minutes from where we live just before the rates rose steeply and found tidy and reliable tenants for it almost immediately.

I got to narrate Rob Gardner’s Lamb of God, a production I have long considered to be one of the greatest musical works about Jesus Christ and had never dreamed that I would get to someday be involved in. I was inspired by the mastery of those I worked with and came away wanting to be better, but never feeling inadequate.

A short film I directed screened at a film festival. I got to see my acting and my storytelling up on the big screen in a room full of people that seemed to really resonate with it. Soon after, I got to play Macbeth and tackle this deliciously interesting Shakespearean text I never thought I’d get to touch.

I got to fulfill the dream I had had for probably 14 years of wanting to see the Oberammergau Passion Play in southern Germany and, even with that kind of build-up, it wildly exceeded my expectations. I loved it so, so much. It was a delight to get to share that experience with my parents and good friends. And it inspired a screenplay idea that I am still excited to write.

I had incredible adventures with my husband and sons. I loved hiking to wildflowers and waterfalls, visiting Bear Lake, and having a Pacific Northwest road trip that made it feel like all the future family adventures we’ve always dreamed about were not only possible, but closer than ever.

I sat in awe of my two amazing boys. Watching them learn and grow was then and is still one of the most thrilling and fulfilling things I’ve ever experienced. I am floored by my older son’s memory and tenderness and thoughtfulness. My younger son’s laughter and silliness can brighten any day and I loved snuggling him so, so much.

That year also saw me spending the fall and winter rehearsing for A Christmas Carol and Pride and Prejudice, both of which were so rewarding and had such dynamic, warm wonderful people in them and made me feel like myself again as an artist.

The other 2022 saw the stress and overwhelm of two toddler boys bringing me to a breaking point several times a week. The words ‘freefall’, ‘disaster’, and ‘trainwreck’ frequently came into my mind to describe how it was going.

I was having frequent, excruciatingly painful gallbladder attacks which began to irritate and ultimately damage my liver, nearly necessitating my skipping the trip to Germany to have emergency gallbladder surgery. My numbers stabilized and we went, only to have my appendix rupture on the trip (which led to daily pain affecting my experience of every beautiful place) and resulted in my having a different, unrelated emergency surgery only ten days or so after dodging the first one.

They were unsuccessful in removing my appendix because of the inflammation, but still sent me a bill for $65,000 for just the hospital stay, not including the procedure. I continued to have an inflamed and ruptured appendix in my body for another nine months after that.

We took our dog Scout on a beautiful outing in the mountains one Sunday afternoon in the fall, and spent the drive home talking about what an incredible dog she turned out to be, only to have her hit by a car and pass away that very night.

I cried literally every day for a month and just when I was starting to feel peace and accept the reality of the situation, the city I live in came and chopped down 300 20-year-old trees in our neighborhood (200 or more of which didn’t need to go) and restarted my feeling like everything just keeps getting taken away and can’t come back.

At Christmas time, an airport snafu followed by severe storms stranded my husband and son in Utah while I had our other son with me in Alaska and so we spent Christmas apart, me with his family and he with mine. Not getting to see my older son’s face on Christmas morning absolutely broke my heart.

Both of these stories are true. Both of these years really happened to me and incidentally, they’re the same year.

How you tell the story of your life and your experiences matters. Even as I typed those two different versions of my life at New Year’s that year, I had a physiological response to them. The happy and grateful one made my breathing even, relaxed my muscles and the other gave me an instant stomach ache and made me well up with tears.

I don’t think we should brush our hard feelings under the rug, but I do think, as we look over what has happened, that we should find ways to see ourselves through the lens of strength and potential and resilience instead of weakness and unluckiness and doom. We should see the world through the eyes of opportunity for creativity and innovation, not a place that offers nothing but sorrow and heartbreak. Life is a chance to keep trying and getting better, not that place where you can’t catch a break.

Telling the story of your experiences as stepping stones to the person you’re becoming is the magic of gratitude. That can include the good and the bad, but either way let yourself be a character on the rise.

I haven’t been letting myself be a character on the rise for quite some time. I’ve had such a marathon of setbacks that I kind of stopped believing in the bold, eccentric, hopeful future I used to count on. I need the exercise of returning to the pages of my gratitude journal (whose creation in itself was a serendipitous collaboration of just the right gracious and talented professionals at just the right time), to remind myself that every day has its blessings. And those blessings come from the unconditional love of a Divine Parent.

The first version of the year felt like I was being divinely looked after a little better than the second version, but these events overlapped in time so either you believe Heavenly Father is there for you and invested in your good or He’s not. He doesn’t pick some days to care about you and some days not to. I’m only just beginning to learn how to look at all that happens in my life through the lens of “what would I take away from this if I knew for certain that it came from a Being that loved me?” Earth life and free agency have natural consequences that are painful, I don’t believe Heavenly Father pulls every string in every event. Not everything happens for a reason, but God can make reason out of everything that happens.

As we learned in the most recent General Conference, “mortality works”. Even the hardest things we are experiencing can work wonders inside of us on our path to refinement. And finding some utility in such struggle is a thousand times easier when you’re exercising your gratitude muscles every day.

So, if you haven’t already committed to joining my November gratitude challenge, start today. It doesn’t have to be in my journal, it can be in any form you choose. But try to count your blessings every single day this Thanksgiving month and see what it can do for you.

Feel free to share your experiences with me at Ma****@me**************.com and I will share readers’ insights as part of my weekly check in.

For those of you who missed it, I issued an invitation two weeks ago to join me in a November gratitude challenge. You can record your gratitude in any way that works for you, but our “It is Well with My Soul” Gratitude Journal is on a special sale in honor of the occasion. CLICK HERE to get yours for $12, or $10 each when you grab some friends and buy 5 or more.