The G Word
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When everything falls away what’s left? That’s the question I was forced to face this month. If you read last month’s blog or listened to the podcast then you know I am in my fall season, but what was I falling to? That’s what this month was about, and the answer was simply complex: A purified gratefulness. Last month started with things seemingly falling apart, and this month ended with my hands wide open and holding onto nothing but God. Every option had been removed, and the plan He was revealing had me so far out of my depth that my best move was dependence. (And if you know me you know that hasn’t always been easy for me, but thank God for deliverance.)
Trigger Warning
Now, if the thought of gratefulness makes you wanna roll your eyes let’s take a beat and address that. Why is that the knee-jerk reaction? (And if that wasn’t you, roll with me anyway because I believe God has some revelations here for you too.)
Gratefulness. This word can seem condemningly accusatory like you’re not doing enough. Our downfall can be that we try to prove our gratefulness but often the root of this is obligation. We know we’re supposed to, so we try, but when the motivation for gratefulness isn’t right, the action doesn’t ring true. The goal is not proving but purifying.
I’ve learned that you only force gratefulness when there’s a truth about God that you haven’t received. We may think it’s true, but we don’t KNOW that it is. Sometimes knowing is just choosing to accept the evidence we have and deciding to believe it. It’s refusing the delay tactic of needing more evidence before we’re convinced.
I fully believe that ungratefulness is a symptom of a limited view of God because when you have a revelation of even just one aspect of who God is, gratefulness is the natural response. You don’t have to try to be grateful you just have to recognize what you have to be grateful for.
Don’t think I’m making light of this. It’s not always easy to see reasons to be grateful, but let’s be clear, it’s not because the evidence isn’t there. We just give up before we find it, well at least I have. I have gotten tired of seeking, fed up with believing, and then I tell myself it’s easier to give up hope. But when our gratefulness has become stale and stagnate situations come to purify and revive it. Sometimes it’s in the absence of what we wanted that we become grateful for what we have, but uncommon gratefulness has the added realization that we not only have what we need, but we always have and always will. It brings an extra confidence, and you become grateful for things you don’t have yet simply because you know they’re coming. I’m grateful for the goodness and mercy that’s chasing me down even if it all of it hasn’t hit me yet. But yal it’s a miracle that I’m here still believing.
For much of my life, I felt so disappointed in my relationship with God. Let’s be real and have a heart check. Have you ever felt like me? Are there any areas of your life you felt like God wasn’t there for you? Did you feel like He’d abandoned you? Have you felt like He let you down or didn’t come through? Have you felt ignored or used? Let’s go deeper. Who did you become when you felt like God wasn’t there or didn’t care? Who did you become we you stopped trusting God?
At some point, I felt all of these things. I felt burnt out, used up, and like I was talking to a brick wall who didn’t care enough to speak back. I thought God gave the big blessings to everyone else but me. I was under-loved and overlooked, at least that’s how I felt. But when I was really honest with myself I realized the problem was that I was only willing to recognize God’s love in the ways I wanted to see it. I wasn’t willing to believe He loved me, I wanted Him to prove it. I wanted Him to earn my love and devotion. I wanted big miracles, ASAP answers, pain-free experiences, but what I didn’t truly want was the relationship He told me He would provide. Yal I had sugar baby goals- I wanted Him to buy my love and agree to a relationship on my terms, and I didn’t want to be required to trust or have faith without proof first. And what happened is God used my circumstances to change my heart.
There comes a time where you are tired of feeling frustrated and stagnate, and empty. You know when you’re living a life outside of purpose, and it starts to bother you. No distraction can help you avoid the realization that something is missing. That’s where I was. I was smart enough to know that something in my relationship with God wasn’t right but dumb enough to feel like I had done my part. I had a list of things I felt like God had done to let me down so I wasn’t going to pretend like I trusted Him, but I also didn’t know what else to do. So I told Him, “I don’t trust you, but I’m trying. I want to, but I don’t know how. Please help me. Show me.” It wasn’t an eloquent prayer, but it was honest. It was a little scary to try to trust, but it beat the alternative. With each experience, my trust grew, and it keeps growing. With each instance, I started recognizing God’s impact on every situation, on my character growth, my peace, joy, and happiness. One day I looked up, and everywhere I turned I could find something to be grateful for.
What I See Clearly
Gratefulness has the power to transform you. It’s in finding gratefulness in the uncommon that can purify your gratefulness and unlock a level of blessings that most people miss.
So how do we do it?
- We’ve got to face the reality of our ungratefulness instead of pretending that it’s not there. Admit it to yourself and then get to the bottom of it.
- Then we’ve got to choose to look past any evidence to be ungrateful. In looking past it, we’re choosing the truth and intentionally looking to find gratefulness knowing that it’s there. And I don’t mean the “God woke me up this morning” type of gratefulness. What are you genuinely grateful for? If it doesn’t move your heart when you think of it, you might need to find something else.
- We must get what our gratefulness shows us. There’s always a lesson. You can measure your growth by your gratefulness. It’s a compass that shows you your desires and values, and it’s an indication of maturity. When you can find gratefulness in the uncommon, that’s mature gratefulness.
The Culmination
The trick about making a habit of finding gratefulness in the uncommon is that it becomes a lifestyle and then the theme of your life story. So what story will your life tell? What truth do you believe so deeply that every day you will look for evidence to reinforce it? What will you look to find even in the most uncommon experiences because you know that it is there? Choose, but make sure it’s the truth and then look for that truth in everything.
This month I decided my life will tell the story that God is good. That truth is big enough to fully encapsulate every moment I’ll ever experience. There’s something about this decision that removed a layer of pressure off my life that I didn’t realize was there. I think part of me was always waiting to be disappointed by God, and because ALL of me hadn’t embraced this truth (that God is good) I was waiting for evidence that it was a lie. But fully embracing it shifted my life and opened my eyes. I now see so much of God’s goodness when I look at the darkest areas of my life that I usually just wanted to forget.
The thing that is so unexpected to me though is I always thought that increasing my gratefulness would somehow lower my standards, you know they say when you become more content you don’t want much. In some ways, gratefulness altered my desires, but it increased my expectations and ironically changed my definition of unacceptable. See, when you know God wants you to have His best, something in you starts refusing to accept anything less. All of a sudden the way I take care of myself is changing. If you treat me in a way that is less than I want to be treated, it no longer matters who you are and your reason- it is unacceptable, and until you agree with that in thought and action by changing your behavior, I will keep my distance. But this doesn’t just apply to other people. How I treat my body and spirit is changing too. The quality of the things I buy is changing. This truth has truly shifted my life and aligned me with the abundant lifestyle I was always trying to get to.
So a question for you:
What truths have you aligned your life with, and are they the truth? And do you like the results?
If you’re not sure then ask God to show you.
Here’s the thing. I believe that God will always provide us with the answer we need once we reach the posture and position we need to receive it. For me, that’s usually wanting to do His will and be closer to Him more than I want the answer to my question. When my heart and mind hit that place genuinely, that’s when God usually answers.
My goal right now is purified authentic, mature gratefulness. It is learning to be thankful for what I didn’t get as much as what I did. I had to ask myself, and I’ll ask you. Are you grateful for what didn’t go to plan? Can you see the divine in the things you didn’t see coming?
So I want you to practice finding gratefulness in the uncommon. Here are a few examples of the gratefulness I’ve found.
Redefining Beauty
I’m thankful for some of the things I’ve been through that left a scar. The memory of some of my mistakes, the relationships I’ve had to work to mend, the dysfunctional relationships I’ve had to let go of, the consequences I faced for errors I made- all the evidence of the person I used to be in various versions of my past. I’m truly grateful. I believe there are some experiences God didn’t erase the memory of so we can always remember the reality of our own transformation story. Who we’ve become is more beautiful when contrasted against who we’ve been.
I believe a dimension of Jesus’ beauty is His scars. When He was resurrected He could have chosen to erase them, but He kept them. Scars have beauty because they bear the evidence that healing happened. So, don’t treat your scars like wounds. They aren’t the same. I’m grateful for the scars I still bear. God could have erased them but like Jacob’s limp and Jesus’ scars they are a reminder of love, healing, and sacrifice.
Every Superhero Has an Origin Story
I’m grateful for learning my own origin story- the how and why I became who I am. So much of life happens in our minds, and often we process experiences and make choices about who we need to become without even realizing it. This month God showed me how some of the choices I made as a child evolved into who I was as an adult. He showed me how what seemed like a solution to my child mind birthed problematic mindsets that I didn’t even know I was living out. I saw the moment I became a little Ms. FixIt and the reason behind it. I always thought it was just how I was, but remember natural behaviors can be perverted into dysfunctional habits.
Case in point as a child I was always helpful, but at some point, I decided that I could fix the dysfunction around me by being the helpful child because if I was helpful then everyone would be happy. Yea I know to an adult mind we know it makes no sense, but yal that mindset didn’t stop there it evolved into romantic relationships and became “If I’m useful then maybe they will love me.” I never knew this was at the root of how or why I was the way I am, but God healed me without me asking and then brought me face to face with what He healed.
I think so many of us, including you, have parts of our origin story that God wants to uncover and heal, but we’ve got to slow down and allow Him to do it. This takes spending time with Him, being vulnerable, and telling Him (in word and action) that He has the freedom to do whatever He wants in and through us.
Painful Processes
I’m grateful for the painful processes. This was the question I was hit with. What if you getting hurt is part of the plan? I couldn’t accept this when God said it, and it burned more when He said it again months later. This was my reaction: Lord why must the plan include my pain? It seemed so unnecessary especially because it seemed like I was the only one hurt, but my hurt triggered something. I couldn’t let go of the hurt without letting go of the lie behind it. That was the blessing from my pain- the freedom from past hurts and the lies that allowed them to take root.
Some of the pain this year hit like a sucker punch. I thought I knew how to handle pain but when they cut me to the white meat, I forgot the fundamentals. I was like “But God they hurt me badly,” and He was like “That changes nothing. Forgive.”
What I See Clearly
Sometimes God allows you to be hurt on a deeper level so He can heal you on a deeper level. Some pain opens you up in a way you haven’t opened previously because sometimes we don’t go that deep until we have to, and when we do we find other hurts and pain that we buried there.
Prolonged pain taught me how to not abandon God. For so long pain was my trigger that made me drop everything and do an about-face. It was my no-go zone, but this year God required me to go through multiple situations that hurt me deeply so I could lose the fear of it. Some things you have to face so you no longer fear them, and it’s in facing them you learn to access your strength. I learned to admit and lean. I had to face the feelings and admit I was hurt- ignoring and avoiding doesn’t bring healing it just allows the pain to fester, spread and harden into bitterness or unforgiveness but facing it takes some of the sting out of it. And leaning that’s the secret sauce. That’s the admission that I can’t fix it myself, and it proves I believe God can. It’s the part of the process that ushers in healing and provides the strength to live past the hurt. It allows the hurt to become useful because when I bring it to God He can show me what the purpose of it is and how to use it so it won’t be wasted.
I’m grateful for the moments I was broken because I broke in all of the right places. It’s in my breaking that something new was revealed. It hurt but it opened me up in a way that something beautiful and resilient came from it and brought a new depth, confidence, and authenticity to me. The process isn’t easy. Sometimes it costs you your comfort. And sometimes pain is the refining process that purifies. My heart is purer than it’s ever been (at least as an adult). Going through this season has helped me love more authentically and live more intentionally. I’m fearless with my love now because I’ve faced some things that were my worst-case scenario, and they didn’t kill me. Some strength comes from looking back at the things you thought would take you out and seeing that you overcame them. It’s seeing that you truly are an overcomer and living like you believe it.
The Wrap Up
I’m thankful for spiritual growth in place of an answered prayer. For the challenge instead of an easy journey. I’m thankful for ignored requests and a frustrating lack of answers, and moments that looked like everything was falling apart. I’m thankful for the times I was exhausted from working and when I tried my hardest, but it still didn’t work out right away. I’m thankful for the moments I felt blindsided by the plot twist and the overwhelming assignments. I’m thankful for the times I felt taken advantage of and when I cried myself to sleep. I’m grateful when the plan included my pain because it caused me to grow and better understand how to truly sacrifice for others. I’m grateful when I was afraid and felt like I didn’t know what to do. Every imperfect moment this year made me better and catalyzed growth.
I want you to practice finding gratefulness in the uncommon. I want you to search for reasons to be grateful like your future depends on it, because in some ways it does. Your abundant mindset is on the other side of your decision to be grateful. And be honest with yourself and face all the evidence you have to be ungrateful. Ask God to show you the truth and do everything you can to hold on to it.
I’m rooting for you. I believe in you, and I am praying that you choose gratefulness and then reap all the benefits of that choice. And know that I’m practicing this too.
And before I go, I want to make sure you know I’m grateful for you. Thank you for choosing to share this journey with me. I pray you find gratefulness in all the uncommon places. See you next month. Talk soon.
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I want to continue this conversation so comment on this episode, message me on any of the Clarisee social media pages or contact me at Clariseeblog.com. We are on this journey together. I’ll be sharing how I’m doing on social media, and I want to know how it’s going for you too. So don’t leave me in this by myself.
