What happens in us when “gratitude goes AWOL”? It is an experience every one of us can relate to at some time – perhaps more often that we think. Thank you, Donna, for being real – for telling us about your own experience of elusive gratitude and for your, “and yet…” awakenings.
With gratitude,
Doug
Have you ever had a stranger ask you if you’ve been “saved?” It’s disconcerting, isn’t it—the assumption that they know what it means to be saved and that they are certain that they are. Saved.
I much prefer the question, “Do you need to be saved?” Do I? Do we?
I am grateful for the hope that comes when I’m aware that I need to be saved, when I know that I need to be delivered from something that is holding me down (And it can be anything, really).
For when I realize that I need to be saved, I will then ask for help. And I will seek to cooperate with God in my salvation. And it comes. God saves.
I’ve been asking for help for a few months now. Daily. I’ve been surrounded by and fettered to feelings of powerlessness at work and other negative emotions, too—frustration, anger, fear, anxiety. And there’s been no gratitude.
Or I should say that gratitude has been most elusive, gone AWOL (absent without official leave but without intent to desert).
And yet…
I am grateful that I haven’t been shaming myself for not feeling grateful. (This is a big step for me!)
I am grateful that the Psalms give voice and, yes, permission for me to admit that I need help and to ask for it.
I am grateful that I am learning the difference between desolation (as in Ignatius desolation) and clinical depression and anxiety.
I am grateful that salvation has come in these weeks, not once, but time and time again.
I am grateful that salvation is an expansive process and that God loves to save and does in fact save. And wants my cooperation.
All the time.
Now that’s something for which to be grateful. All the time. Thanks be!
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