Gratitude Testimonies
How are your Gratitude Experiments going? Tell us your stories! E-mail your testimony to the staff anytime here!
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Stories So Far
"After the fantastic February Young at Heart luncheon, we went with our water bottles and home-baked goodies, to thank the Lebanon firefighters on East Gay Street. They were very surprised and happy to receive our gifts and support and mentioned they were trying to stay warm in the cold weather. I wish I’d taken a picture as each one crept around the corner! Thank you for the nudge we needed!"
"Today I was at the trash convenience center, and I asked the worker if he would like some water. He was very appreciative."
"I stopped at Slow Hand for a coffee. It was pouring rain and the parking lot was empty except for a single car, backed into a spot in the corner. I parked and as I was getting out a gentleman approached me from the car in the corner with the look of someone needing help, I assumed money or food. He could not speak English; he had a dead battery in his car and, with the language barrier, he’d had a difficult time getting a jump. Between his bad English, my equally bad Spanish, and the universal experience of having found yourself with a dead battery, together we managed to get his car started in just a few minutes. I noticed that his family was also in the car and they had what appeared to be all of their belongings stuffed into the car with them. I don’t know if they were unhoused, traveling, or something else entirely, but they were clearly thirsty and I’m grateful that I could help them. I pray they are safe and have all that they need."
"Through these experiments, I have really started paying more attention to how many people not only in my day to day do great things that are worth a thanks, but how many people in my past shaped me to who I am now that deserve a thank you. I chose to write letters to people in my life who change me, influenced me, or have development me be who I am today. People who maybe never even thought twice about the impact they made on me or haven’t thought about me since. I realized how thankful I am to these people because without them, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I never realized how influential these people were. Now, I really look at each interaction I have with others just in case I might also be influencing their lives as well. What small difference can I make in their lives that just might change everything? Can I bring them closer to God? Could I change their day and change the course of their life? If one small interaction from each of these people could change my life, I want to ensure that every interacting I have is loving, kind, and Christ-like cause you never know what it might do. I am so excited to continue looking for ways to be grateful and seeing how it just might continue to change me."
Gratitude Project Ideas
Got a Gratitude Project you'd like to do with us this year? Tell us about it here!
A Poem by Steve Robbins
The Ripple
A pebble falls, not with fanfare but with intention.
A moment of weight surrendered to gravity, its purpose found only in the breaking of the surface.
The pond receives it without resistance.
There is no argument— only response.
A small crown rises. Brief and breathless.
Water lifted from water, crystalline, shaped like sound.
Tiny droplets arc into the air— clear beads of motion,
held for one perfect moment against the gray-blue skin of the sky.
They catch the light— each one a prism, a flicker,
a bright stutter of the world before falling back into what they already knew.
Below, circles begin. Not drawn, but born.
Perfect, at first. Concentric thought. Geometry without architect.
Each ring a memory of the last, repeating what it knows until it forgets.
They travel, those silent witnesses, across the skin of the world.
Outward. Always outward. Measured, but unknowable. Fading, but not gone.
The trees do not speak of it. The reeds do not move.
But the water remembers what it felt like to be still— and then to be touched.
There is no center now, only echo.
The pebble rests at the bottom, unaware of the distance it created.
We are not so different— dropping words into silence,
watching how they move.
Some vanish.
Some reach a shore we never see.
