Referring to the topic “Gratitude (A Mountain of Gratitude Made Out of Molehills”) I had the opportunity to share about what I call my "Prayer Tree”, or Guardian Tree as referred to in my culture. I was asked to share a picture.
This light bulb moment was brought to me by personalizing what I was told was a "God Box", a box to put slips of paper in with prayers written on them, as a physical way to turn things over. A veteran member of this site had suggested this for me and I gave it a shot.
My box got full enough one day that I figured I would empty it. I noticed that many of the slips of paper had the same thing written on them over & over again. Not only did I notice I was handing the same things over & over again, and started to work on that habit.
It was suggested by a different veteran member that I personalize my God Box. So, it turned into a tree. I give gifts to my tree. I give offerings of tobacco to my tree. I write my prayers on ribbons and tie them onto the tree.
A third veteran member, challenged me to a “30 Days of Gratitude” for Thanksgiving. During that 30 day challenge, I noticed that there were plenty of prayers asking for help from m HP, but not very many prayers of gratitude.
Even though I was grateful for all that my HP has done for me... but I had forgotten to actually thank Him.
My daughter started to use the tree. I started seeing my neighbors stop and look at the tree in wonder. And then all the sudden, I realized the neighbor kids were asking my daughter for ribbons… they were writing what they were grateful for, and adding to the tree as well.
I realized that not only molehills of worries can turn into a mountain, but that molehills of gratitude can turn into mountains as well.
Today I have much gratitude in my life because I got to physically watch it grow. This is one of the best blessings in my life. Thank you, to those of you who made these suggestions. It’s been quite a while, but I hope you remember who you are.
It started to get rather full, so, yesterday I got a knock on the door from the caretaker of our community. I thought for sure he was going to ask me to take it down, but instead he asked for an explanation. When he reported back to out landlord… I was told that it was fine the way it is. They are letting me keep our prayer tree.
