With a grateful heart

It’s amazing how deeply our environments shape us in the most subtle and sublime ways.

A girl growing up in a place where no appreciation or affirmation is expressed to her or around her grows up to mimic the words– because, you know, it’s the thing to do. 

But even as the words leave her mouth they are dry and empty, void of the feeling that she never knew could accompany these two little words: thank you.

Do you ever pause to ponder on the magnitude of value packed into the things for which you say “thank you”?

Growing up we’re conditioned to parrot the two ‘magic words’ such that it becomes an unconscious reflex in our engagements in and with life. The automation of our thank yous has made them reek with triteness and inauthenticity. As such, we say them as a passing remark and take for granted the things we toss them on, without the appropriate conscious thought, attention, and appreciation.

You’ve heard it said that familiarity breeds contempt. Indeed, as we grow just saying the words, having no guidance as to the weight, wonder and worth for the things to which we say the words, we come to expect that things should just be so.

Think of how often we are easily tempted to take so much for granted.

A child may clean his room, eat her vegetables, or obey a command and this can go unnoticed leaving a good deed of today to drown in the sea of prior misdeeds.

A clean, tidy home is often overlooked, as though items magically return to their proper places and dirt intuitively knows to vanish.  And of course mom has to make nutritious nourishment every single day, after all she is naturally the nurturer. 

How the food comes to be in the home can also be disregarded as dads dutifully and routinely go out and return over and over again shouldering the heavy responsibility that is to provide for and protect a family.

We chase the dollars, consume the goods and services without acknowledging the miracles of agriculture, industry and free and fair trade economies.

For those living in safe and sound lands, we move about without recognizing the enormous privilege of a stable government.

Even the Self is spared no appreciation for the courage it displays in accomplishing the toilsome task of daily living.

And above all, God our Creator is scorned, though He is the giver of the very breath we effortlessly, freely and limitless enjoy continued life and livelihood; by whose immeasurably and incomparably merciful reign we continue to live in, and vandalize His good creation.

When I look around the world  – my inner world and the world at large – I am often staggered at how prone we are to presuming graces and favours, and in their voracious consumption we have the shameless audacity to give no sincere thought to the incredible odds and synergies that align to bring about the various things we presume.

Is it right to depreciate something or someone just because it exists  inexhaustibly and abundantly?

Alas I wage this is a construct of our beginnings. When we are born we come into a place where the sun comes up, the rains fall, and food comes forth from the ground. We’re swaddled in warm blankets, coddled and served on demand. Year after year we come to surmise that the world is ours and everything and all who live in it exist for our pleasure. God help if something or someone does not par up to our demands.

And when they do meet our expectations, should we give standing ovations for our servants merely doing their duty? So we nurse entitlement and thereby fall and perish into contempt.

Caught in the lie of our supremacy, we learn to say the words, but our hearts are far from it. We think we deserve it all. We feel we are owed it all. We wish to be the center of it all. Oh the folly of this hubris!

It’s taken me a long time to get my heart out of this detestable insolence into the waters of genuine thankfulness and though I am still not quite there yet, I’ve gained some worthwhile insights that helped me embrace and attain joyful thanksgiving:

Firstly, 

“It’s your life, but it’s not all about you”

I received this admonition from the Holy Spirit when I was obstinately stuck to a season where everything was about me me me.

Why me. Why not me. They’re talking about me. They’re not talking about me. They’re jealous of me. They don’t care about me. They didn’t think of me. They’re out to get me…me…me.

Gosh when I remember how I was, I should appear pale with horror if my skin tone was lighter! At that time, my refrain could easily have been Destiny Child’s Me, Myself and I.

I was caved into my little self and tiny world that I honestly didn’t see other people; to me they were just figures moving about, occasionally mumbling nonsense. Doubtless they were not blabbering fools, but I was just so wickedly tuned out that I neither heard nor could listen to these other figures. All I wanted was to hear the sound of my voice at all times and with all people: let me tell you what happened to me… I feel… I think… I wish… I need… I want…

Woah! No wonder the Lord had to step in and just shut that awful record down!

Yes, down. 

Because authentic gratitude begins at low altitude.

Self absorption is one of the hindrances to giving thanks wholeheartedly. It is the affliction of thinking, consciously or not, that the world revolves around us and our insatiable demands. This condition is a symptom of our disconnect from the Truth, who calls us to subservience and an others focused consciousness.

Cultivating sincere gratitude is a lofty endeavor which is attained in the same way as undertaking to summit a high mountain: we start from the bottom . 

In Scripture God the Christ teaches us that “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted”
Jesus Christ in Matthew 23:12

Perhaps because the nature of our beginnings in life breeds the innate tough-to-kill or uproot weed of self-centeredness, our hearts cannot bear not being the main attraction.

Having been the beginning and end all from infancy, adopting a lowly view of ourselves is the fierce fight we must willingly conscript to if we would hope to be spared enormous humiliation. But more often, our stubbornness rouses the divine intervention woven in the law of human relations such that one way or another we come to understand that we are but grains on the shores of life.

The reality is that each grain is both remarkable and insignificant.

This is worthy of consideration. 

When we interact with others, they too are like us, knowing and demanding (and deserving) of notability, while burdened by their own smallness.

I’ve heard that sometimes small people feel that they need to be ultra loud to be recognized in the world. Infants, somehow aware of their smallness, scream and shrill their demands. 

Yet it is the distinguished person who accepts the grace to not think of himself more highly or lowly than he ought, but rather considers himself soberly in light of the duality of his humanity. Such a person grows at ease with the responsibility of minding their life, while simultaneously minding his Maker, his neighbor, and his surroundings.

It’s not easy to care about the rest of life that is, nature, animals and especially humans, if we are only obsessed with ourselves and our lives.

Nevertheless, creating or seeking out opportunities to practice humility can transform us into genuinely thankful people.

Then only can we start making the most of the opportunities presented in various moments to really recognize and see the whole rest of life and we will find truly awesome gratitude germinating in our heart. 

In addition, we will be able to cheerfully serve the fruit of authentic thanks in all the circumstances wherein we have things we get to enjoy, humans we’re graced to encounter, and all such other things and moments whose treasures we may perceive  in retrospect.

Embracing humanity is another essential element for achieving hearty gratitude.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (This is my favorite definition of sin.)
Apostle Paul in Romans 3:23 

No matter your faith, humanity continues to suffer the dis-ease of inadequacy to get anything perfectly right, every time, everywhere and with everyone. 

I’ve liked to think of myself as a considerate preemptive person but even with my best effort to say or do it just right, whatever it is often falls short and does not quite hit that glorious spot with perfect precision or satisfaction.

So here’s the problem I found out about someone like me who thinks too highly of themselves (exhibit above – “considerate and preemptive person”): we harm ourselves and others with absurd expectations.

Idealism, another affliction that has tormented me to madness, aggravated my inability to offer genuine thanks; nothing was ever just right and on par with my ideals, thus nothing was worthy of my gratitude. The result of this foolish interaction in life was exceeding impoverishment.  

The truest fact is that absolutely no human can know, let alone attain The Ideal. 

It took God coming into the world to reveal how the true ideal we constantly fall short from looks like in real life, and He revealed that man’s best efforts are offerings of dust and ashes.

Failure to embrace my and others’ humanity was a heart attack waiting to happen to me. I hated the tension of receiving something or someone doing something for me and not being able to pump thankfulness freely through my heart and express it joyfully. I was always so harsh and cruelly critical of any effort, my own or others.

But now that I know that everyone, including myself, is really trying their best in spite of our inherent weakness and propensity to miss the mark, I am amazed that mere mortals should exert massive effort, though they really don’t have to, in valiant attempts to reflect a shadow of the Perfect One in whose image we are very goodly made. 

Therefore, enjoying goodness, imperfect as it may be is another ingredient that turns ordinary, and even bitter waters into sweet wine.

Authentic thankfulness, and every other good thing in all creation, comes from God. Misery, suffering and tragedy are consequences of sin which God allows, according to divine decree way back in the beginning. God is too holy to mess around with ancient boundary stones, and though these things taint the very good things he made it is our responsibility to choose to see and celebrate any speck of retained good in the world, in ourselves and in our neighbor.

I wish I was smart enough to come up with these things myself. But I am not. I was only human for a long time. Now I have the mind of Christ, praise be to God!

As a human, my concern was merely for survival and civilian affairs. Add to that my rather gory childhood, prolonged existence in lack and staggering tragedies, I always found it hard to see any good in the world, and about life or people. Most of all I hated God, thereby hating goodness and forfeiting its surpassing joy.

But today, my heart swells with joyfull thanksgiving to be found here, a transformed soul that lacks nothing to beam out praise. How did it happen?

Certainly not of any ounce of my effort, albeit for a needless while I strove with all my might to make myself genuinely thankful. All I know is that it was by the wonderful mysterious work of God, who answered my heart cry prayer for a heart that gives thanks, with a grateful heart and slowly but surely God grants my petition and continues to  make me new!

Sure, I still fall short and grumble every now and then at something I think someone didn’t get just right, or when something I presumed my right is denied me, and when I backslide into the abyss of covetousness. But the Holy Spirit now living in me quickens me and I find my heart more and more in rhythm to all the good things generously available for us to enjoy and experience along our pilgrimage.

Like our time here together. ^^,

My heart smiles to picture you reading this humble Scribble, and I am grateful.

I hope, going forward, you will allow your heart to expand and gratefully welcome and embrace all the good-in-the-moment-and-in-hindsight interactions and encounters along your pilgrimage.

With Love,

Nimi