Gratitude is your YES

Happy Thanksgiving!

I’m thinking about the people who feel desperate right now. The people who are trying to muster up the energy to say “thank you”. The people who are struggling. And I’m thinking mostly about our young people. How will they know how to have a bad day and know it’s not the end of the world? We have to tell them. We have to show them. We have to live it.

There will always be ups and downs and even on this special Thursday in November, we may not feel like giving thanks. But it truly is the gateway. It’s the way to peace. It’s how we experience contentment.

Lately, I’ve been struck by all the empty platitudes being thrown around. It’s not good for us. Our kids feel like it’s all “good vibes only” and that’s not realistic. It’s okay to have a bad day. And even on the bad day, we can feel gratitude. We can know we are not alone. We can be peaceful even in struggle. We can process and grow without faking “happy” all the time. How do we do this?

God.

We connect to our source and we ask for help. We receive His grace and we ask Him to be part of our lives. And then we pray. We start with thank you. And then we feel a softness, an opening, relief.

You are not alone. You never were alone. Does He promise happiness every day? NO. That’s not what you really want anyway.

“All good vibes” is too small for you.

ALL OF IT (a prayer for Thanksgiving)

All of it. Be grateful for all of it. Every good thing. Every wrong turn. The “I wish I wouldn’t have” and the “What now?” Days. 

Those days when you jumped out of bed excited. Christmas morning. The day you were headed to Six Flags. Prom. Your wedding. What were those days for you? Too many to name. Perhaps today?

And also for those days when you didn’t want to get up, when the bed was the only place you felt safe. When you wondered, “Will I aways feel this way?”

Those days teach you. You won’t always feel that way. They teach you to honor you. And the ebbs and flows. The Yesses and NOs. The having and the having not. The sun and the rain. The rainbow. It’s all about the rainbow really.

The promise. 

The Covenant. 

The invitation.

It’s all an invitation. 

Giving thanks is our RSVP.

Gratitude is our YES. 

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”-Meister Eckhart