Being Grateful When Life Sucks

Let’s be real. Gratitude can be hard. Sometimes you look at your life and there doesn’t seem to be much to be grateful for. I’ve been there. As I mentioned in a prior blog post, when I was single, I had a hard time with gratitude.

My Story of Ingratitude

The Bad News

I always had expected to get married right after college. Instead, I graduated college without a boyfriend. I hadn’t even been asked out on a date ever. I’d never been kissed. Financial issues forced me to graduate from college a year early. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I did an internship for a year, but then I ended up back at home, living with my parents, no idea what I really wanted to do, working a lame temp job and still sadly single. Gratitude was not easy in that season. Everything in my life seemed wrong. I felt like I had nothing to be grateful for.

The Good News

The truth is though, I did. The job I had wasn’t terrible. The people I worked with were great. I had no prospects on the dating scene, but I was once again in the same town as my best friend from high school and his wife. I got to hang out with them and get to know her really well, which I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. I got to spend a lot of time with my family. We got along well and they supported me in the midst of the funk I was in. I was able to save pretty much everything I was making towards grad school (which I knew I wanted to do).I went to a Bible Study where I met some awesome people. I was serving in a way I really loved at my church.

My life was not all that bad. Sure, it didn’t look like I expected it to look, but it was still not terrible. It could have been way worse. However, I allowed my unmet desires to keep me from being thankful for the things that I did have. I didn’t appreciate any of those things until they were gone. 

Ingratitude in the Desert: The Israelites Tale

The truth is, sometimes we go through the wilderness. Sometimes we’re in a desert. These are hard places with unexpected pain and unmet desires.  They happens to all of us at various times in our lives. However, even in the desert, God provides us with gifts of his grace.

When the Israelites were in the desert, God was constantly providing for them. He provided guidance through the pillar of cloud/fire. He gave them food in the form of manna from heaven and quail. When they were thirsty, God provided water from rocks. He helped them defeat enemies that were more powerful than they were. He kept their clothes and shoes from wearing out.

Despite God’s provision, the Israelites still had a hard time being grateful and trusting God. Moses stays up on the mountain too long and the people start worshiping a golden calf. They constantly grumbled against God and talked about how great they had had it when they were slaves in Egypt. Hello! You were slaves people! Anything is better than that!

We’re Just Like Israel

We’re like the Israelites though. We easily forget the things that God has provided and focus on the thing (or things) that we don’t yet have. This keeps our focus on ourselves rather than on God or the people around us. That’s why it’s especially important for us to practice gratitude when we don’t have what we want. In those times, we are more tempted then ever to focus only on ourselves.

I’m not saying this is an easy thing to do. My own life shows that I’m not always the best at it. However, it’s in the times when we’re in the desert, when we feel that nothing is going right, that we really need to look around us and discover the little gifts of grace that God is providing for us. Those gifts are there. They’re more difficult to find than when things our lives are going great, but we can find them if we look closely.

Practice Gratitude

Take a minute. Look at your life. What is one little gift that God has given you today that you can be grateful for? It doesn’t have to be something big. It can be the sunshine, a smile from a stranger, a delicious treat. Anything that has brought you a little joy today in the midst of difficulty will do.

The truth is, if we can’t see God’s grace at work in our lives in the difficult times, we are bound to overlook them in the good times too. We get used to the self focus. Our self pity will turn into self-sufficiency. We’ll think we “earned” the good things rather than being gifted them. We’ll forget that all good things, big and small, come from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

So take the time today to be grateful. Write down what you’re grateful for. Tell a friend. Take a picture. Post on social media. Choose gratitude today. In the end, you’ll be glad you did.

Photo by 30daysreplay (PR & Marketing) on Unsplash