Surrendered Gratitude

The holidays are that time of year when we are supposed to feel grateful, loving and joyful. For many, it is a time when life’s challenges become magnified. It’s as though the sparkling lights and glitter seem to shine a spotlight on our grief. With so much buying, eating, visiting and and rushing, we feel stressed instead of loving and resentful instead of joyful. Too may “have to’s” inevitably lead to a bunch of “I don’t want to’s”.

Recently I was introduced to a phrase I had never heard before. “Surrendered gratitude”. I struggled with that phrase at first and after much thought I realized why. For almost all of us, there are things in our lives we wish were not so. We want them gone. Don’t want to deal with them. Not how we think our lives should be. Too hard. Yes, life is hard!

We have much to be grateful for but sometimes that heavy burden we are dealing with puts us in a less than grateful frame of mind. It overshadows the good. It is not the life challenge itself that causes so much suffering. It is actually the resistance to it that keeps us in pain and keeps us from appreciating all the good things that are in our lives.

True, wholehearted gratitude comes when we surrender it all — what we call the good and the bad. Surrndering means we recognize we are not in control. We don’t know why we were blessed with some things and cursed with others. “Blessed” and “cursed”, by the way, are labels we attach to our experiences. What if we didn’t label any of it and just let it be (while doing what we can to help the situation). For the truth is, we don’t know why certain experiences come into our lives. The really tough ones are often the cocoon through which we birth the butterfly.

Surrendered gratitude means to me that I release all my judgements about my life, myself, other people — everything. It means I live in a state of humility, a state of “not knowing” and being okay with it. I may still feel pain but in the midst of it I am grateful for it all. While we live in a crazy, chaotic world, there is a divine intelligence underneath it all. It may not seem that way when you look at the actions of people and nations. But if you look at a tree long enough or ponder the miracle of your own breath or gaze quietly at the moon, you know there is something mysterious and intelligent underneath it all.

So my wish for us all this Thanksgiving is that we are able to find the peace that comes from surrendering and accepting everything that is in our lives. For then we are able to experience true gratitude which warms the heart and soul. Happy Thanksgiving!