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Choosing Gratitude: Transforming Your Life & Community Despite the Odds
Paperback
Publisher: Market Square Publishing
Published: Apr 7 2026
Pages: 152
Weight: 0.47
Height: 0.33 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
What does it mean to choose gratitude when life does not turn out the way you planned?
In Choosing Gratitude, Dennis R. Atwood invites readers on a deeply personal and profoundly hopeful journey-one forged in the crucible of pastoral ministry, congregational life, and a life-altering diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson's disease. Written with pastoral warmth and honest vulnerability, this book speaks to everyday believers navigating disappointment, anxiety, loss, and uncertainty.
Atwood does not offer shallow optimism or toxic positivity. Instead, he explores gratitude as a deliberate spiritual practice-one that begins within the heart but ultimately transforms communities. Drawing from Scripture, personal stories, and over thirty years of ministry experience, he shows how gratitude is not denial of hardship but a faithful response to it.
The book unfolds in two movements.
In Part One, Atwood lays the spiritual foundation for gratitude. Through biblical reflections on passages such as Psalm 95 and Matthew 6, he addresses anxiety, disappointment, and the daily grind of life. With candor, he shares his own struggle to choose gratitude after stepping down from pastoral ministry due to Parkinson's.
But gratitude, Atwood insists, cannot remain private.
In Part Two, he tells the compelling story of The Gratitude Project, an innovative ministry initiative that empowered a small congregation in rural North Carolina to invest boldly in its community. With limited resources but abundant faith, this church reimagined its purpose, leveraged its assets, and made a tangible impact among the most vulnerable.
Choosing Gratitude is ideal for individual devotion, small groups, church-wide studies, book clubs, and community organizations. Each chapter includes reflection and action questions designed to spark conversation and practical engagement. Congregations will find in these pages a hopeful framework for rediscovering their mission in a time when many churches feel anxious, divided, or uncertain about the future.
At a time when negativity and fear dominate headlines and social media, Atwood calls the church back to its essential identity: people who trust in God's abundance rather than scarcity; people who express gratitude through generosity; people who become the hands and feet of Christ in their neighborhoods.
Honest, biblical, and inspiring, Choosing Gratitude challenges readers to adopt gratitude as a daily posture-and to let that gratitude overflow into acts of justice, mercy, and compassion.
What Readers are Saying About Choosing Gratitude: With great sensitivity forged through deep engagement with Scripture, three decades of faithful pastoral ministry, and the challenges of Parkinson's disease, author Dennis Atwood prods and guides individuals and congregations toward renewal through the practice of gratitude. Choosing Gratitude is an inspiring, informative, and practical guide for individuals and congregations who yearn for vitality amid personal and communal challenges.Bishop Kenneth L. Carder, Duke
Choosing Gratitude is a powerful example of the freedom to choose how we will respond to the unexpected. Dennis Atwood exemplifies facing the reality of a chronic condition with authenticity and courage. A book for those who desire to use their experience of suffering for something good in the world!
Steven N. Scoggin, Wake Forest
Dennis Atwood has written a deeply personal and biblical guide to gratitude. Though living with the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease, he has chosen gratitude as his lens for looking backward and moving forward. But Atwood doesn't stop with personal gratitude. He envisions gratitude as generosity expressed outwardly to the community. Choosing Gratitude is a very inspiring read.
Rebekah Simon-Peter, Author
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