10 Things I am Grateful I Don’t Have to be Grateful For

There are a few words of holy writ I wish had never been written. With slight variations, they all say the same thing: Give thanks unto God for all things.

It’s that qualifier “all” that is troublesome. It is easy to be thankful for all things when fortune is smiling down on you. Not so much when your life has been up-ended.

I have never possessed the depth of character to be able to summon honest gratitude in the midst of tough times. It has only come after — sometimes long after — that I begin to see the growth that occurred, and realize I have changed for the better thus allowing gratitude to blossom.

And so this year, my list of things I am grateful for is actually a list of things I’m grateful I don’t have to be grateful for:

Shoveling mud out of my house after a flood

Receiving the news of a terminal illness

Grappling with addiction

Planning a funeral

Sifting through the ashes of a fire

Losing a job

Navigating serious mental health issues

Posting bail for a child

Deciding what bills to pay and what can slide another month when there isn’t enough money

Fleeing an abusive relationship.

I could go on and on but you get the idea.

I have experienced some of them over my lifetime. And in a perverse twist, it seems that our capacity to feel grateful actually increases when life has kicked us around a bit.

I love the words of Alphonse Karr — “some people grumble that roses have thorns; I am grateful that thorns have roses.”

We live in a time of great wealth — and great want. A time of amazing advances — and stubborn inequities. A time of inspiring ideas — and ugly rhetoric. Lots of thorns among the roses. But being grateful for the thorns, even genuinely grateful, can never give us permission to shrug off needed action to do our best to remove those thorns, thus becoming part of the solution, instead of the problem.

Buddha says it a little more humorously: “Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful.”

In the final analysis, gratitude is a gift we give ourselves. Summoning gratitude during the tough times softens unfairness, takes the edge off anxiety and tempers bitterness or despair. Perhaps, in the end, that is the real reason behind a loving God’s wise counsel to “Give Thanks Unto God for All Things.”