Grateful, Thankful, Blessed......ish.

I announced a month dedicated to gratitude on The Holding Space today.

Throughout the course of the day I have been ruminating on ways to present this topic in the most real life, honest way I can.  Part of my prayer today was that God would guide me as I create content and present this topic to those who are following The Holding Space…listening to and learning from what is presented here.

My first thoughts on gratitude may not be what you expected.

Social media and fall decorations (kinda like the one in my post about the month) have made the word ‘gratitude’ into a marketing goldmine.

Let’s be honest, you walk into any store right now, you will FOR SURE see multiple home décor items that say Gratitude, Be Grateful, Grateful and Blessed, and on and on and on…

Social media is full of memes and clever quotes about “Grateful, Thankful, Blessed”, or something similar.

Now, let me clarify for all you fall lovers out there!  I’m here for it!  No hate for fun fall decorations and cute signs and mugs and sweatshirts and all the things.  Truly.

And also…

In my conversations today, I spoke with some women who are going through a season of life where they feel grief, loss, anger, sadness, disappointment, and shame.  Gratitude is fleeting or feels very far away most of the time.

I’m willing to guess that you also have moments where you’d like to take a sledge hammer to those “Grateful” signs in the fall décor department.  A little harsh, but you get my meaning.

What a way to start our gratitude month….lots of warm fuzzies, am I right?!?!

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As someone who feels all the feelings, I want to give us all permission to take off the gratitude 24/7 mask and collectively breathe a sigh of relief that we, in fact, do not always feel grateful 100% of the time. 

Or, maybe the more accurate description would be that we don’t ONLY feel grateful, and all other emotions are non-existent in our fluffy cloud of gratefulness. 

I feel like the reality of life, especially a life following Jesus is that…gratitude is possible, even necessary.  I'm speaking of true, deep gratitude.  And, it can co-exist with a myriad of other emotions that we as human beings with real lives experience every single day. Or can it?

Can we allow them to all sit at the same table together?  Is it even possible?  How do we live in that tension? Is there a difference between the cheesy gratitude that is everywhere we look this time of year and the practice of being grateful and existing in a posture of thanksgiving?  I believe there is.

I will be the very first to say that I don’t have the answers, I don’t have your life, and there are so many situations that I don’t understand and therefore can’t speak to accurately.

I will also be the first to say that I care deeply about this space, and seek to hold it for all of us as we journey together to see what we can begin to understand and apply to our lives about authentic gratitude.  

Thanks for listening.

I’m grateful.(For real)

Dawn