On Being Thankful

Today is a day on which many Americans will pause to be thankful. 

We will look around our tables, look around our lives, look into our mirrors and push aside all of the negative things, if only for just a breath, that have taken our breath away this year and use one strong exhale to embrace what is good. 

We will sit around with one another and ask each other, "What are you thankful for?" And we will receive answers that look very common, no matter what table you're at. For family. For friends. For jobs. For healing. For food. For pets. For victories. 

But for many of us, as we speak those words, they will feel a little empty. A little forced. A little fake. 

Because some of us aren't in a good season. Some of us have been fighting battles that others can't even fathom. We've been stuck in a pit of darkness, swirling down into greater and greater troubles and griefs like we're stuck in some kind of horrible whirlpool. We cannot escape. 

The season we're in has maybe taken so much from us. We've lost someone we love. We've lost multiple someones we love. We burned through our savings. We got a new diagnosis. We were laid off at work. Worse, we were fired altogether. We are looking at an empty chair across from us at the table - a parent who died, a partner who is separating, a child who has grown up. 

For all kinds of reasons, the heaviest thing at the table this year might not be our plate; it might be our heart. 

And yet, there is still this pressure to push it all aside, plaster on a smile, and claim one good thing we're thankful for. 

Like Jesus. Maybe Jesus. That's always a good answer, right? 

Sure, I guess. Unless in your dark season, you're struggling to be thankful for Him right now. Unless you're struggling to believe. Unless you have questions that haven't been answered yet. 

Listen, I'm not saying we shouldn't look for the good in our lives. Of course, we should. But what I am saying is that we have to be honest about the bad, too. We have to be honest about what's real for us in this season. 

Remember, we didn't ask for this season to be this season, and we didn't plan for it to come at Thanksgiving. But it is what it is and we are where we are and we're dealing with what we're dealing with. 

And I don't think we have to be thankful only for the good things. 

I think one of the measures of our faith is how we can be thankful for the bad ones, too. How we can hold onto thankfulness in a season when we don't really feel it. How we can choose to embrace what is unknown and unwelcome and not push it aside, but embrace it with thankfulness. Like Paul's thorn in the flesh. He was thankful because of the way that it changed his perspective. He didn't pretend it didn't exist.

He reframed it, if only for a moment, as a gift. 

So if today, you're in a season, and someone asks you what you're thankful for, think long and hard before answering. Let your season settle in your heart for a moment and ask yourself what kind of gift it might still be giving - even if it's a gift you didn't ask for or one you don't particularly want or one you haven't unwrapped yet. Ask yourself if you're thankful for your hard days and, if you can be thankful for them, share that. 

And if you can't be, then share that, too. 

There are no bonus points in heaven for plastering a fake smile on your hard days and pretending this life has to be good all the time. Only God is good all the time; the rest of us live in seasons. 

And some of those seasons are hard. 

And that's okay, too.