Today’s the killer,” my husband announced as he entered the kitchen. He meant frost. “It’s down in the twenties.”

How I choose to react to anything that early in the morning sets the tone for my day.

My initial reaction didn’t seem a choice, but a natural response. I jolted pleasantly awake, almost as if I’d stepped outside and felt the crisp coolness on my face and in my nostrils stirring my senses and refreshing my energy.

Not that I’m nuts about feeling cold. Anything but! This is different, part of “fall restart mode,” legacy of all my autumn-begun school “years.” Besides, I wasn’t actually feeling cold, inside my cozy house. That itself was something to be grateful for.

There was the key, even to a seemingly automatic positive reaction: the gratitude attitude about which I’d just set my resolve. Coming down the stairs shortly before, I’d purposed  to start my day thinking five gratitudes. I needed them.

Yesterday, organizing (and peeking into) old journals had plunged me into memories of several tragic events, and their accompanying sadness. Now I had to climb back out. I also realized I’d left my self-discipline of five daily gratitudes somewhere on my brain’s back burner lately, and figured I’d do my emotions a world of good by quickly moving it to the front and getting it bubbling again.

Guess what? I did.

I feel a thousand per cent perkier than when I got up–and not just because of “automatic” frost reactions and delicious, steaming coffee (another gratitude). Negative thoughts depress not only one’s emotions, but also one’s energy level, and the gratitude attitude does just the opposite: even energizes!

So I’m focusing on my gratitudes and thanking my beneficent Heavenly Father—-which latter action is a key perk-up to my spiritual state as well. Romans 1, starting at verse 18 (with focus on verse 21), shows me how the whole downward slide of man (or woman)—individually and collectively—begins with failure to recognize God as God and be grateful to Him for all the good He is and does.

Gratitude–especially that expressed to God–is an emotional life preserver. Grabbing it to ride life’s waves sure beats flailing about amid the turbulence, trying desperately to keep my head above water.

Which leads me to thoughts of an even more crucial topic: the key to spiritual prosperity…

(More on that in a later post…)