On Gratitude and Grief
Gratitude and grief rarely go together, but one can help us endure the other.
A little over a month ago, and just a few days after I re-launched this Substack, one of the most unexpected things happened to me again - only this time, it doesn’t have a happy ending. The situation itself is long and complex, but not the focus of this piece (especially since the individual in question is likely to read it). All you need to know is from that phone call came a dark new chapter in my life, and a slow moving hurricane of confusion, anger, sadness, and betrayal has battered my family and my church ever since.
The book is on pause. Again. The margin that I had to work on that has now been reclaimed by my church as I step into some new service roles created by this situation. The exact details are still being ironed out as of the time of this writing, but the grief of deciding to leave my ministry role earlier this year is nothing compared to the bittersweet anguish of having to come back, even in a very limited capacity, to take over something that you always dreamed of being able to work on but never being allowed to do it. I know I am being vague on details. Maybe later down the road I will elaborate. But again: all you need to know is that from that phone call came a new dark chapter in my life, and a consequence of the slow-moving hurricane of grief is that doors I thought were closed for good have reopened to things I have long wanted - just not like this.
The more I’ve learned about the situation, the more I have re-litigated cases I once thought were closed for good. It’s one thing to mourn something that happened, and it sucked, and you eventually move on from it. It’s another thing to mourn something that happened, and that thing sucked so much it triggers a re-evaluation of the past nine years of your life as a precondition to being able to move on. It is another thing even still to mourn something that happened, re-evaluate nearly a decade of your life, and have to live in the grey zone of acknowledging that you were never crazy for the constantly disorienting frustration of wasted time on unwanted pursuits and there were more genuinely good things that happened during that time, and good things that came out of that time, that you can possibly wrap your mind around.
Social media managers have some of the highest burnout rates in the broader media/marketing industry. It happened to me once and I know it could happen again. I can’t tell you the last time I took the entirety of Thanksgiving week off, but not only was it a good time to take a break, Thanksgiving is the appropriate holiday to do something I’ve not been able to do well since this crisis started: to hear myself mourn and to hear myself respond in gratitude. Circumstances have forced me to bury my anger and sadness to focus on the task(s) at hand, thankfully which provide more than enough static to scramble the signal of pain. But having unplugged from Social Babylon1 for the week, there is little static to block out the heartbreak, which means there is little static to block out the sound of thankfulness amid that heartbreak.
The Psalms are the proof that grief and gratitude can often accompany one another, and that the latter helps us withstand the former. The Psalms often begin in darkness, but resolve towards joy and peace; when read through as a book, this cycle moves back and forth over and over again. One moment the Psalmist (whoever it may be) is suffering, the next they’re delivered; another moment the next Psalmist (could be the same person, could be a different person) is lamenting, the next they’re exuberant. The Psalms never pit these two emotional states against each other. If anything, the Psalms assume that you will move between both ends of the spectrum, sometimes repeatedly, and that its okay to do so.
What isn’t okay is living in one end of the spectrum as a means of ignoring the other end. Wallowing in your grief is one of the worst strategies for being able to move on from it, as evidenced by the slow-turning tide against therapeutic culture that encourages a fixation on your brokenness to the point it becomes an identity that defines who you are and how others should see you (which positions healing, growth, recovery, or any positive movement as something to avoid lest it take away the thing that helps you know yourself). Neither is using gratitude to avoid grief altogether. A faux gratitude which uses thankfulness to fly-swat anything that threatens the image of an idyllic illusion isn’t even a budget version of the real thing; it is a counterfeit, one that has the appearance of virtue while being worthless in power.
Remembering reasons to be thankful can be painful. Sometimes there are precious few things worth celebrating. Sometimes the situation is an unfolding darkness in progress that light hasn’t begun to shine through yet. Thankfully, my situation is not that. Thankfully, I can name plenty of great things that happened this past decade. Thankfully, the Lord has been powerfully at work even in the midst of the growing void of a relationship that is no longer there. Thankfully, thankfulness makes the disappointment, the hurt, and the sorrow more bearable.
But I know that may not be you. The holiday seasons are among the darkest of the year for those mourning the loss of a loved one, or with ongoing trials and wounds where relief is still nowhere in sight. But grief need not be your only burden. Count your many blessings. Name them one by one. See what God has done - and see how gratitude can help you not just endure your grief, but find a way to thrive in spite of it.
Thanks for reading. This wasn’t something I wanted to write, and the speed at which I wrote it manifests itself in just how sloppy it is, but I hope there is something beneficial to you in it all the same.
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Happy Thanksgiving,
- Austin
A subset of Digital Babylon proper.
Why not process your grief without preaching at everyone else how to live/worship…as if you’re the first and have special revelation?