Grateful for the Whole Journey

Grateful for the Whole Journey: Thanksgiving weekend arrives each year with familiar images: tables surrounded by family and friends, the colours of autumn, food shared generously, and perhaps a few moments when we consciously name the things for which we are grateful.

There is something very good about that. We need occasions that remind us to stop and say thank you. So much of life can be spent thinking about what we do not have, what has gone wrong, or what we still hope will happen. Thanksgiving invites us to notice what is already here: the people who love us, the beauty of creation, the gift of faith, and the simple blessing of another day.

But Henri Nouwen, the priest and spiritual writer, asks us to go deeper. He writes:  “To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives, the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections—that requires hard spiritual work.”

That is a very different understanding of Thanksgiving.  Gratitude at its deepest level embraces all of life: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful. It recognizes that gladness and sadness are rarely completely separate, that joy and sorrow often belong together, and that mourning and dancing can somehow be part of the same journey.

This does not mean that we call suffering good.  There are experiences for which we could never reasonably be expected to give thanks: death, illness, betrayal, disappointment, loneliness or failure. Christianity never asks us to pretend these things do not hurt. Jesus himself wept. He knew rejection and disappointment. In Gethsemane, he knew fear and anguish.

Christian gratitude is not pretending that everything is wonderful. It is something much more courageous.  It is believing that nothing has to be wasted.  Nouwen continues: “We are only truly grateful people when we can say ‘thank you’ to all that has brought us to the present moment.”

Perhaps that is one of the invitations of Thanksgiving this year: to look back over the journey that has brought each of us to this particular moment.

There will be things we remember with happiness: people who have loved us, friendships that sustained us, doors that opened unexpectedly, prayers that were answered. But there will be other things as well.  There may be an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table this year. There may be a relationship that has changed, an illness that has frightened us, a disappointment we are still carrying, or a prayer that seems to have gone unanswered. Some may look back and see choices they would make differently if they could live those days again.

And yet, all of it has brought us here. That does not mean God caused everything that happened or that everything was God’s will. But faith allows us to believe that God has been present through it all and that, in God’s hands, even the wounds of our lives can become places where grace enters.

Perhaps suffering has made us gentler. Failure may have made us less judgmental. Grief may have taught us how precious another person can be. Something we once thought would destroy us may, years later, have become part of the compassion with which we meet another person’s suffering.

That is why Nouwen encourages us not to divide our lives into the parts we treasure and the parts we would rather erase. Instead, he invites us to look at the whole journey and trust that somewhere within it we may discover “the guiding hand of a loving God.” Maybe that is the deeper grace of Thanksgiving.

We come before God not simply carrying a basket filled with our blessings but carrying our whole lives.  The laughter and the tears, the successes and the failures. The people who remain and the people we miss. The prayers answered and the prayers still waiting for an answer. And standing before God with all of it, perhaps we can slowly learn to say: Thank you, Lord, for the whole journey. For what I understand and what I do not. For what I would gladly live again and even for what I would never choose to live again. Thank you for bringing me to this moment. And thank you for being with me along the way.

The quote that this reflection is based on is from:  Henri J. M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith, “The Spiritual Work of Gratitude,” January 12.