Fifty Days of Gratitude: Days 45 & 46

Keeping a Gratitude list or journal or post, as I do in this season, has been recommended by everyone from the Surgeon General to Oprah. The very act of naming what we are specifically grateful for somehow expands us. We become more in tune with the generosity and grace that vibrates in our lives.

One of my seminary professors (and many other wise people in the world) says that everything has a shadow side. That for every virtue there is a vice. For everything that makes our hearts sing, there is something about that same thing that makes them sink. So the shadow side of naming gratitude in this way is that it can create or give the appearance of creating an unconsidered optimism.

By nature, I am an optimistic person. I do believe that the forces for good in the world outweigh the forces for evil. And I also know they both exist. They both insert themselves into our lives and the lives of those we love causing pain and chaos; they break us apart. If we can, in those days and seasons, naming gratitude can be a helpful thing. Not that it fixes what is shattered. Not that it illumines any way forward. But that it simply serves as a reminder that things have not always been this way, that things will not always be this way, and that the shadow does not overcome the light. Even in times of relentless tragedy, the light still shines. (That same professor also used to say: "All will be well. We might die, but all will be well.)

My gratitude today is for the people and systems that accompany us all when we walk through the shadowed valley. For therapists and physicians and recovery centers and communities of faith and communities. For friends who are able to sit beside us without an urge to solve. For those people in our lives who love us without condition. Oh, this is the big one for me. For so, so long I lived a life of striving in order that I might be loved. What a waste of years. But that is, maybe, a different post for a different time.

Dear Ones, if you are walking through a shadowed valley, may you be surrounded by those who love you without condition. May you know in your bones that the light still shines and that it shines within you, even when you cannot see or feel it.

(The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is accessible by dialing 988. We all need you here. You are beloved.)