I learned the lesson just over 4 years ago, that gratitude is an extremely powerful thing. I can say with certainty it was the first step to the joyful place I am in life today, but I had some very difficult moments where I first had to make a choice.
At that time, I led women through healing principles of a recovery program, and at that time we were on the step of gratitude. The lesson material was great, but it was all head knowledge. Not that I didn’t have my moments of gratitude, but it was a chosen attitude - sometimes - not a way of life. I decided I wanted to increase my gratitude, make it my default posture, so I took on one of the materials suggestions, to start a daily gratitude journal. I figured I would start January 1st and try it out for one year. After a few weeks I was really enjoying it and noticing I was even more positive than usual.
Then.
Day 23 on the calendar, day 43 of my cycle, approximately 23 days of life.
I had a miscarriage.
The furthest along I'd been to date. Even my husband had suspected. Even though I couldn’t bring myself to test yet, we had already enjoying a few days of dreaming of all the plans. Then that evening we shared tears instead. As I got into bed that night I looked at my gratitude journal sitting there and contemplated. Do I write something today of all days?! And the thought that flooded my mind was how grateful I was that this time I finally had been able to share the grief with my husband, and that even at our lowest point we had managed to find laughter together. And so that’s what I wrote.
The next day we were hanging out with friends, and even though they were our people - they were like family - at first we weren’t sure we could share immediately, with the hurting still still so fresh. And after all, we'd never told anyone about our past miscarriages before either. But, as things would have it, a perfect opportunity opened up, and I knew that was our cue to open up. And we were of course overwhelmed by the love poured out over us. And so that night I again looked at my gratitude journal and thought, how can I not be grateful for the tremendous support and love of our friends.
Then the next evening we were at the recovery group where we led, and again wondered if we should try to share or hide our still very raw pain. Only a few minutes into our pre-meeting with the other leaders, a community we thus far had been able to be transparent and vulnerable with, and we decided to open up about our grief once again. And again, we were not disappointed. Once again, we were overwhelmed by the care people took with our wounds, how they hugged when they had no words, and the words of ‘me too’ poured out from unexpected places. And so again that night I looked at my gratitude journal and started writing, the words on it's pages validating the very group that had suggested them.
And after that I didn’t even have to question each night if I would write, I just continued to find reasons in the coming days, weeks and months, no matter how hard it got. And through my continued choice of gratefulness, joy has found me.
Sometimes we need the darkness to notice the light.
Save to Pinterest to bookmark this post for future reading.