The Power of Gratitude: Charting a Path toward a Joyous and Faith-Filled Life

By Patrick M. Garry and Peter Brandenhoff

The Power of Gratitude reflects on the experiences of Michael and Elizabeth Garry, who became an inspiration in their community, to reveal the secret to a life filled with the virtues we often consider unattainable. Michael and Elizabeth demonstrated how true gratitude might be foundational to everything else: the attribute that enables one to love without interruption, serve without expectation, persevere without anguish, and find joy in every minute of life. Gratitude is not just a thank you for a specific benefit, it is a way of life.
Based on their lives, a self-improvement conference could be condensed to one sentence: if you nurture an enduring gratitude--and not just a thankfulness for particular events--then you may find a deep joy, as opposed to transitory excitements. The lesson they taught: find gratitude, and you will find the person God meant you to be.
The Power of Gratitude also reflects on the divisiveness of contemporary society. In ungrateful times, there can be no social peace. Rivalries fueled by resentments replace the unity and generosity that flow from a culture of gratitude. But when gratitude dispels fear, it can inspire the courage to live in a way that fuels future gratitude.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Apr 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666765922

Patrick M. Garry

Patrick M. Garry, JD, PhD, is professor of law at the University of South Dakota. He is the award-winning author of several books, including Conservatism Redefined, which received Honorable Mention in World magazine's Book of the Year honors. Garry writes frequently for both popular and scholarly publications, and he has testified before Congress on several occasions. He has delivered hundreds of lectures across the country.

Book preview

Preface

Every life has a story. And every story has a lesson. We see the lives, but we often miss the stories. And we seldom grasp the lessons.

Maybe we are too focused on how the lives affect us in the immediate present to detect the stories. Maybe we are too blinded by the flurry of day-to-day living to understand the lessons of those who have left us their stories. But it is those lessons that can best show us how to live in the here-and-now.

Such a lesson appears from the lives of Michael and Elizabeth Garry, who would not have considered themselves noteworthy or even special, but whose lives left countless ripples that pulsated through generations of diverse and otherwise unconnected people. And within the story of their lives seemed to lay a secret, the mystery of which arose not from deliberate concealment but simply from the difficulty of detection by those unfamiliar with the power of gratitude.

As Michael and Elizabeth demonstrated: finding a way to base one’s life on gratitude triggers all the rewards that arise from all the traits that grow out of a life centered on gratitude. Gratitude is not just a thank you for a specific benefit; it is a way of life.

This story of two ordinary people who found an extraordinary way to live shows how gratitude can transform life and fill it with joy, an eagerness to serve, an enduring courage, and a deep faith in God. This story reveals how gratitude can chart a path toward a life filled with the virtues and values we often think of as unattainable.

We distribute thank-yous all the time: to the person who holds the door for us, to the server who brings us our meal. Thank-yous pervade our daily dialogue. But gratitude is something quite different. True gratitude is as rare as thank-yous are pervasive. Understanding that gratitude is a way of life, and not just an appreciation for moments of happiness, can lead to the kind of life for which one is then more deeply grateful. The secret of life is that gratitude begets cause for more gratitude.

In today’s world, true gratitude may be disappearing even faster than are peace, unity, and tranquility. But true gratitude might underlie everything else: the ability to love without interruption, serve without expectation, persevere without anguish, and find joy in every minute of life. Gratitude may be the key to unwavering optimism and energy, even when everything on the outside turns to chaos. On a larger scale, gratitude might also be the answer to our social malaise, the healing remedy to the conflict and divisiveness so prevalent in society.

The lesson revealed by lives like those of Michael and Elizabeth is simple to understand—simpler than any life coach’s advice—yet difficult to implement, insofar as the focus of those lives might now be labeled countercultural—insofar as modern culture has overridden gratitude with other contradictory concerns.

Every life has a story, and every story has a lesson that can provide valuable guideposts for those still on the journey. The tragedy is that too many stories and lessons are lost. But not all. Enough survive to guide us through the life created for us.

Michael and Elizabeth lived in a way that highlighted the lesson for a joyous and faith-filled life: a lesson timeless in its truth but perhaps too often hidden amidst the flurry of living.

Introduction

I had done this with my father three years ago for my mother’s funeral, so I knew I had to be on time. People would come early, wanting to beat the crowd and avoid the long line. I was half an hour early, but people were already waiting. Wakes and visitations in a small town are all about the family reception line.

I arrived at the funeral home at 3:30 in the afternoon. I didn’t leave until after eleven that night.

This is going to be a big funeral, the mortician had said when we first met to discuss the arrangements. But even more people will come to the visitation. We’ll keep the doors open for as long as you want, he added.

A group of friends had spent hours earlier that day making cookies and sandwiches and salads for the visitation. Other friends would be pouring wine and soft drinks for the visitors. My father always believed in a good party.

We had done the same thing for my mother’s funeral three years ago. That had been an even larger funeral; my father had hosted the reception line at the visitation, and he was the one for whom most people had come. I stood next to him in that line, making sure he had a chair if needed, or a drink if he wanted, or just someone to shake some hands if he got tired. But he never took a break. The thing about my father: the more people who surrounded him, the more energy he had.

And now it was his children and grandchildren receiving the long line of visitors who had come to say goodbye and pay their respects to my father.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the balding man with the red-streaked face waiting to talk to me. I didn’t look directly at him because I could tell he was crying, and I was searching my memory for the man’s name. Despite the aging face, the thinning hair and the reddened eyes, there was a familiarity about him. But it wasn’t until he took my hand that I recognized him.

It had been more than forty years since I had last seen Marlin, since those summer days when I worked at my father’s grain elevator in southern Minnesota. Marlin owned a small trucking company that hauled grain out of the elevator. He was young, but he was tough. You didn’t need him to yell at you to know he was tough—you could see it in his face. As a teenager, I was scared of him. I never dared tell him to move his truck. He seemed like the kind of guy who could hold his own in a bar fight—the kind of guy who could defend himself against an irate three-hundred-pound truck driver gripping a lug wrench in his fist.

I wondered if Marlin remembered me. At best, his attitude toward me at the elevator was indifference. At worst, it was growling and belittling. Maybe even taunting. I sometimes wondered if he was trying to pick a fight with me. But I later concluded he was that way with everyone, except my father.

And now Marlin stood in front of me, on the verge of a full-scale sobbing. He said very little at first; he just tightened his grip on my hand. I never would have made it without your father, he finally said. No one else gave me a chance . . . or . . .

Then I remembered something about a troubled history. Marlin probably hadn’t possessed a very high credit rating with the bankers.

Everyone thinks I’m a jerk, and I guess I am. Your father probably thought so, but he never held it against me. I owe your father . . . Then he suddenly stopped talking and shook my hand all the more vigorously. I don’t know what I’ll do without him.

Thirty years ago, Marlin had moved his company hundreds of miles west; so I wondered what he meant by not knowing what he’d do without my father.

I found myself stunned by Marlin’s statements and demeanor. I wondered if he had ever cried before. I couldn’t imagine it. But as my father often said: every person is a mystery.

•

Don’t ever minimize the ripples, large or small, that you can make in the world.

—Michael Garry

•

My father lived his whole life in a small town in southern Minnesota. He was a successful businessman, a leader in his community and church, and a popular writer for the local newspaper. But he also had a way with people like Marlin the trucker. He had a way with people who were in trouble. Whenever someone new came to work at the elevator, we knew not to ask too many questions—and we knew not to tell our mother about the stories we heard from the new employees. But I never felt the kind of fear or paralysis I felt the day Wilbur started working at the elevator.

It was late afternoon. I was sitting at a wobbly desk in the corner, filling out grain storage tickets, when I heard a series of sharp grunts and then a loud thump. I turned and saw Wilbur lying on the floor, his body convulsing in uncontrolled, wildly jerking movements. But it was his eyes that terrified me. They were a dark gray, looking as if they were trying to crawl out of their sockets. They looked like foreign creatures that had taken possession of Wilbur’s face. I was so focused on his eyes that I hardly noticed the foaming at his mouth. Everyone in the office seemed frozen in place, paralyzed by the sight of Wilbur convulsing on the floor. I had never seen death, and I was certain Wilbur was dying. And then my father suddenly appeared. He knelt on the floor, held Wilbur’s head and inserted something into his mouth. My father knelt there until the convulsions ended.

That night, Dad told us that Wilbur suffered from severe epilepsy. The seizures posed a danger that Wilbur would swallow his tongue; that was why Dad had put the piece of leather into his mouth.

I was not prone to adulate my father, but the way he came to Wilbur’s rescue, I thought, was the bravest thing I had ever witnessed.

Wilbur’s parents had asked my father to give Wilbur a job. They said my father didn’t have to pay him; they just wanted their son to have a chance at as normal a life as possible. But Wilbur got paid. And he had a job until his epilepsy became so bad he couldn’t leave the house.

My father gave lots of reasons for why he hired people like Wilbur. He said they were the most loyal of employees. He said it was good policy to surround yourself with grateful people. He said he wasn’t the perfect employer, and that his best employees were those accustomed to imperfections. But I never trusted all those explanations. I just think my father was drawn to people with troubles. People like Eddie.

When I came home from college at the end of my third year, I saw a man painting the side of the garage. I shouted out hello as I climbed out of the car, but the man ignored me and kept on painting. Sitting with my parents later at the kitchen table, I asked about the unfriendly man.

Oh, you have to make sure he can see your mouth when you talk, Mom said. He’s almost completely deaf, but he can sort of read lips.

His name was Eddie. He worked at the house for almost ten years. Sometimes he did jobs that my parents never intended to do, because he misread their lips or because my mother couldn’t get his attention in time to change course. We joked that the only requirement for a job in the Garry house was to have some type of problem or handicap. As children, we had a grossly inaccurate impression about how the employment system actually worked.

When something broke down at our house or at the elevator, we never called a carpenter or contractor who had a shiny new truck or a clean uniform with a name tag sewn onto it. We never called a professional. In fact, our definition of professional was someone we couldn’t afford. When we needed someone from the outside to come and fix a problem, the person who usually showed up climbed out of a rusty pickup, had gray hair, and walked with a limp.

That was Herman, who did our electrical work. My brothers and I dug the trenches for the underground wires while Herman stood and watched, dropping his cigarette ashes into the newly-dug trench. He was nervous and became easily rattled, as he did the time my younger brother asked: Hey, Hermie, how come that blue wire is connected to that red one?

Herman may have been nervous and easily rattled, but he never stopped coming back to work at our house. Even when there wasn’t any electrical work, he stopped by for coffee with Mom, giving her advice on child-rearing.

•

Mike Garry’s imprint is everywhere in Fairmont. From the Knights of Columbus Hall on the north side, to the hospital on the south and the Catholic grade school in between. At the Martin County Historical Society, in the public schools and at Cedar Point Scout Camp on Iowa Lake. And since his death Friday, the gratitude of those who knew him is resonating around town as they recall his benevolence . . .

—Community Reflects on Life of Mike Garry,

Front Page story, Fairmont Sentinel

•

Maybe my father’s funeral was so large because he had friends who had no typical reason to be his friend. People whose friendship stemmed from some long-ago event that would otherwise have been forgotten. People like Maddie.

I had never seen her before. You don’t know me, she said, slightly blushing, and with a tone of self-reproach, as if just realizing that she had stated the obvious. Well, I mean, I knew your father in only a small way—and I haven’t seen him for quite some time . . . so, I hope you don’t think it’s weird that I came today.

She looked to be in her twenties, probably late twenties. She had shoulder-length brown hair, a trusting kind of face that seemed to want to smile, and an athletic build that made me think of her as a tennis player. I’ve never been to a funeral before, and I’m not sure what to do, she confessed, in a way that made me want to put my arm around her and reimburse her for the gas it had taken to drive here. But I’ve never forgotten what your father did for me, she said. And then she told me about the day of her First Communion.

Her family had recently moved to Fairmont, so she had no friends. And to make matters worse, her parents were splitting up, and her mother had taken her brother and sister to stay