Henri Nouwen has some really challenging thoughts on gratitude in the face of pain, suffering, and loss. In Turn My Mourning Into Dancing, he writes:
"Any true gratitude embraces all of life: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy. We do this because we become aware of God's life, God's presence in the middle of all that happens"
"Living gratefully requires practice. It takes sustained effort to reclaim my whole past as the concrete way God has led me to this moment."
"I am gradually learning that the call to gratitude asks us to say, "Everything is grace." As long as we remain resentful about things we wish had not happened...part of our heart remains isolated, unable to bear fruit in the new life ahead of us. It is a way we hold part of ourselves apart from God."
"Instead we can learn to see our remembered experience of our past as an opportunity for ongoing conversion of the heart. We let what we remember remind us of whose we are - not our own, but God's...Our entire past, gathered into the spaciousness of a converted heart, must become the source of energy that moves us onward."
The challenge for me this Thanksgiving is to be thankful for Cora and all of the experiences surrounding her. I don't think I've ever been asked before to be thankful for something that hurts me. Everyone is reminding me that despite what has happened, there is still so much to be thankful for. As though remembering those things, counting my blessings and seeing that they outnumber this tragedy, will ease my pain. But I think there's something to being thankful for it all, even the crappy things. Not many people seem to think of that angle.
It's hard to say "Thank You for Cora and for her short life." "Thank You for giving her to us for seven months." "Thank You for this experience of death and pain." "Thank You for teaching me, growing me, and making me more like You from this experience."
Does my continued resolve to say NO to her death undermine my quest for all-encompassing gratefulness?
Can I be grateful for this terrible thing while still labeling it as terrible and constantly affirming that it was not God's will for Cora to die? And that He didn't allow her death simply to make me better?
How can I be grateful that I was robbed?
"How do I tell my blessings? For what do I give thanks and for what do I lament? Am I sometimes to sorrow over my delight and sometimes to delight over my sorrow? And how do I sustain my "No" to my son's early death while accepting with gratitude the opportunity offered of becoming what otherwise I could never be? How do I receive my suffering as blessing while repulsing the obscene thought that God jiggled the mountain to make me better [Wolterstorff's son died in a mountain climbing accident]?" - Lament for a Son, Nicholas Wolterstorff
