Meeting God in Grief and Gratitude
By Lynne M. Baab, author of Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life
I want to invite you to think of five things you’re thankful for right now. Maybe a person you love, something fun that happened recently, your home, or what you ate for breakfast.
God, you are the giver of all good gifts. We lift these things to you with gratitude in our hearts. Thank you for your kindness and generosity to us. Thank you for the people who have loved us and cared for us.
2019 was a really hard year for me. At the time, of course, I didn’t know that 2020 would be even worse. In February 2019 our son told us he and his family were going to move to New York City as soon as they could get their house fixed up to rent. His daughter, our beloved granddaughter, turned five in 2019. Two years earlier, we had bought a house only a few blocks from them in South Seattle so we could live near our only grandchild. They had a lot of tasks to do on their house, so for many months, I was grieving the coming loss.
In May 2019, Dave’s one remaining sister died unexpectedly from a medical error. In August, I had a routine cataract surgery. The doctor got the new lens in place. Then, the syringe she was using to irrigate my eye fell apart. Part of it hit my eye. Those new lenses are fairly rigid, and the pressure of the impact pushed the lens into my eye so that it broke the back of the lens capsule. My retina was affected, too. August and September were filled with numerous appointments to try to deal with the damage.
In September, I came across the quotation that’s the source for this talk. It comes from an interview with therapist Francis Weller, who specializes in grief. He said, “The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”
His idea of grief in one hand and gratitude in the other was immediately helpful to me. I was so incredibly sad about our granddaughter moving away, but whenever we got to be with her, we had such good times. I was so sad about the coming move and also so grateful for her life and the joy of being with her. When they finally moved in November 2019, I was still filled with grief and also grateful for Skype. My son and daughter-in-law did such a great job keeping alive our relationship with our granddaughter despite the miles. I was sad they were gone and grateful for every connection.
My eye challenges triggered more grief and gratitude. I felt deep in my heart, deeper than I’ve ever felt before, that seeing is such a gift. Every time I saw something beautiful, I thanked God for beauty and the eyes to see it. I was also frustrated, angry, and sad about that moment when the syringe fell into my eye and the damage that resulted.
That fall, I started writing a series of blog posts about holding grief in one hand and gratitude in the other. As I pondered the idea further, I found the rest of Francis Weller’s words to be helpful. He says,
“How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair. If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering. Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.”
He’s arguing that this challenge of holding both grief and gratitude is significant for many reasons. He believes we can’t truly experience gratitude without acknowledging sorry. In my case, my sorrow about the damage to my eye definitely fueled prayers of thankfulness for sight.
Also, we don’t want to become cynical, despairing people, which Weller believes will happen if we sit with sadness constantly without the leavening of gratitude. We don’t want to engage in the toxic optimism that is common these days. If we obsessively look for the bright side, we will not develop compassion. We will ignore people’s pain or shame them for feeling bad.
Let’s pause. I invite you to think of a few sad things. Maybe one sad thing is dominating your thoughts today. Maybe several. Take 30 seconds to notice.
Jesus, Man of Sorrows, we are so grateful for the many places in the Gospels where we see your sadness. Thank you that we are not alone when we feel sad. We bring to you the emotions of sadness we feel right now. Come into our hearts through your Holy Spirit to grieve with us.
Some scriptures
When I started looking at the Bible through the lens of grief and gratitude, I was amazed at how many scriptures resonated with this theme. One of my favorite verses in my moody young adult years comes from Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Most of us have experienced fear, discouragement, and sadness in the night, and then in the morning, joy and thankfulness comes back.
The Psalms have so many moments of sadness and so many other moments of thankfulness. The lament psalms usually begin with sadness and end with thankfulness. (The lament psalms include Psalms 6, 10, 13, 17, 22, 25, 30, 31, 69, 73, 88, 102.)
The Gospel writers record Jesus expressing thanks at the feeding of 5000 (Matthew 15:36; Mark 8:6; and John 6:11), during the Last Supper (Matthew 26.27, Mark 14:23, and Luke 22:17, 19), and a couple of other times (Matthew 11:25, with similar words in Luke 10:21, and John 11:41).
Jesus also expresses what we might consider to be “negative” emotions like anger. When he cleansed the Temple of the moneylenders, we see his anger, and we know there must have been deep sadness in him as well (Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-47, John 2:14-16).
The Gospels report Jesus’s tears twice. Many of us remember memorizing the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” That short but vivid statement comes from the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-44). Jesus also weeps over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). He is anguished in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:6-46).
The story of the raising of Lazarus illustrates grief and gratitude at the same time. Jesus walks to Bethany after he hears that his good friend Lazarus has died. Martha meets him as he enters the village. Jesus and Martha have an extraordinary conversation (John 11:20-27). She expresses her faith that God will answer Jesus’s prayers. He tells her he is the resurrection and the life. Martha says she believes that he is “the Messiah, the Son of God coming into the world” (v. 27). Jesus must have been deeply grateful to see this depth of faith in Martha, and indeed, he rewards her faith by giving her precious words about being the resurrection and the life.
Within minutes after talking to Martha, Jesus weeps with Mary and the other mourners at the tomb. He is clearly deeply sad about the power of death in human life. Jesus is there in community, and undoubtedly grateful that he had people to grieve with.
Another passage that speaks to me about the juxtaposition of grief and gratitude comes in the story of the ten lepers in Luke 17:11-19. The lepers ask Jesus for mercy. He sends them to the priests, and on the way, they are made well. One comes back to thank him, a Samaritan. This is a story about thankfulness, yet alongside is Jesus’s frustration, sadness, and perhaps even anger that the other nine did not come back to thank Jesus and nurture further relationship with him. Jesus was undoubtedly grateful for the fact that a Samaritan man came back to thank him, a sign that the Gospel will spread to all nations. Yet Jesus was sad at the same time.
Rhythms of grief and gratitude
In the psalms, grief and gratitude are sequential. That favorite verse of mine describes it: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
Almost all of the lament psalms have a pivot point where grief, anger, and fear turn into thanks and praise. Psalm 10 opens with the psalmist’s frustration with the way the wicked prosper. Then comes verse 14: “But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief, that you may take it into your hands.” The pivot point is a realization of something about God — yes, God see our pain. The psalm concludes with three verses of praise, thanks, and trust.
Psalm 31 has a pivot point, too, an expression of willingness to trust God: “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hand” (verse 14). Those words come after verses about sorrow, sadness, and pain. Sometimes, as described in this psalm, the Holy Spirit gives us the faith to trust in God again. Sometimes, we move out of sadness because the morning comes, as is expressed in Psalm 30. Other times we realize something about God, like the writer of Psalm 10 does by realizing God does see us and the pain that troubles us.
That pattern in the Psalms of the back and forth between sorrow and gratitude is common in our lives. Another common pattern is holding sorrow and sadness in two hands at the same time. My eye is a perfect illustration of that for me. After two more surgeries, it still bothers me multiple times every day. I am so sad about the damage to my eye caused by a faulty syringe. At the same time, I continue to be incredibly grateful for the gift of sight and the beauty of colors, shapes, people’s faces, trees, flowers, lakes, sunsets, stars, and a multitude of other visual gifts.
Again, let's pause. I invite you to think about grief and gratitude at the same time. This time focus on the earth and the nations. Maybe you’re like me, and you love the ocean — the colors of the water, the pounding waves at ocean beaches, the vastness that reflects how big God is. But at the same time, I grieve the plastic in the ocean. the big blob of plastic in the middle of the Pacific. The microplastics that scientists are finding in sea mammals, fish, and birds. The warming of the oceans. Multiple tragedies in our seas. I feel gratitude and grief when I think of the ocean.
Related to grief and gratitude about the nations, maybe you feel devastated when you see photos of the extreme destruction of Gaza. And, at the same time, you affirm that you love French food. These seem like a bizarre juxtaposition, but they are both true, and God longs to receive your prayers about both.
Creator God, we praise you for this amazing earth you made. Thank you for the beauty of the moon, planets, and stars as well. Thank you for the many fascinating cultures of the peoples of the earth. Thank you for all the ways we have grown because of people we have met from many different places. At the same time, we grieve violence. We mourn damage to plants, animals, and people. Sometimes, our hearts can’t bear the pain. Grieve with us, loving Lord.
Why gratitude and grief are hard
One of the biggest impediments to thankfulness is our consumer culture. We are bombarded with ads saying that we don’t have enough, we are not beautiful or fit or healthy enough, and we should buy something to make it all better. Advertisements tell us this, and social media can reinforce it. I’m sure that many of you have adopted patterns of thankfulness to try to nurture grateful hearts in this crazy culture that shouts at us all the time about how we lack something.
Another impediment to thankfulness is the myth of the self-made person. We don’t have to thank God for the money we have. We earned it! We don’t have to express gratitude to God for our musical skills or our success at work or good relationships we have. We’ve worked at those things! We deserve to be good at them. I’m sure that none of you fall prey to these ideas on a conscious level. However, those beliefs underlie so much of our national discourse.
Our family of origin or experiences we’ve had may also influence us in the area of being thankful and expressing thanks to God. You may want to ponder your own history.
One of the best ways to dismantle the power of these beliefs is to practice thankfulness consistently. I’ve heard people talk about keeping thankfulness lists, sharing blessings every night at dinner, praying the prayer of examenat bedtime, and beginning prayer times with thankfulness in small groups and in the family.
We also experience obstacles to sitting with grief. I wonder if you’ve ever felt so sad you cried uncontrollably or couldn’t sleep for days on end. I wonder if you’ve ever felt so sad that your eating habits changed. Sadness hurts! It really hurts a lot! It’s so much easier to try to avoid it by rushing on to another activity or forcing ourselves to think about something else.
Another obstacle to letting ourselves feel sadness is the emphasis on optimism in American culture. The Power of Positive Thinking has been a best-selling book since it came out 70+ years ago. Generations have been influenced by the idea that if we think positive all the time, good things will happen to us. Some observers call this “toxic optimism,” and some forms of it resonate with the quotation by Francis Weller. He said, “If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering.” I have experienced people who are “saccharine” — overly sweet — when I express sadness.
Just like with thankfulness, some of us have stories from our families of origin that profoundly shape our willingness to let ourselves feel grief. Some of us have experiences lodged in our memory banks that impact our response to sadness. Pondering those past stories can help us grow into an ability to sit with sadness.
Personal lessons
I’ll tell you one of my personal stories related to sadness. Because my Dad was in the Air Force, my family moved 12 times in my first 15 years. I hated the moves. I hated leaving my friends. My Mom felt the same way, and she grieved with me every time my Dad got a new assignment.
Those were the only times I was allowed to feel sad. Every other time, she viewed my sadness as a failure to be thankful. I have a vivid memory of being 16. My beloved boyfriend broke up with me, and I was sad for months. Mom — who grew up in poverty — told me, “You can’t be sad. You have nice clothes. When I was your age, I longed for nice clothes. I knew that if I’d had them, I would be happy.”
If I’d known about holding grief and gratitude in two hands, I could have replied to her, “Mom, I am deeply grateful for the wonderful clothes you buy me. I can’t thank you enough for them. I’m still sad about the breakup, though. I can be grateful and sad at the same time.”
Another personal lesson relates to the way that our sadness can make us feel we can't be thankful. I love to nestle into bed at night. The cozy covers and the soft pillows make me want to thank God for my comfortable bed. Then I start thinking about homeless people who don't have a bed, and a part of me believes it would be selfish to enjoy my bed and thank God for it. No! The idea of grief and gratitude in two hands allows me to affirm my thanks and sadness at the same time.
We cannot let our sadness take away our thankfulness.
The significance of "and"
I have been learning the significance of using “and” instead of “but.” Look at the difference between these sentences:
- The ocean is gorgeous, but I am so sad about the plastic in it.
- I am so sad about the plastic in the ocean, but the ocean is so gorgeous.
Using “but” puts stress on the second half of the sentence and minimizes the first half. Sometimes, “but” even negates the first half of the sentence.
“And” holds two truths simultaneously. The ocean is gorgeous, and I am so sad about the plastic in it.
Here’s one last illustration of the significance of affirming and feeling both grief and gratitude. I am so grateful I found Francis Weller’s quotation before the pandemic. This idea of holding grief and gratitude in two hands was the single most helpful thing for me during the pandemic.
Remember April and May 2020, when we saw photos of refrigeration trucks in New York City holding bodies because the morgues were too full? I vividly remember my sadness when I saw an aerial photo of a mass grave near New York City. Yet I was so grateful for a comfortable house, grocery delivery, a neighborhood where I could bicycle and get exercise after my gym closed, my loving husband in my home with me, and people to talk to on the phone. I had moments when I felt guilty about being healthy and reasonably happy. I felt I shouldn’t and couldn’t be happy when hundreds of people were dying every day. Then, I would remember Weller’s idea, and I would try to hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other.
The human brain loves dichotomies and binaries. We naturally think “we-they,” and we attribute negative things to “them.” Our brains also love hierarchies. “This is better than that.” To hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to get beyond our comfortable binaries and hierarchies. Two things can be true at the same time, but believing that and living into it does not come naturally to us.
The world is beautifully and intricately created by our beloved Creator. People are made in God’s image and do amazing, wonderful, and loving actions that reflect their Maker and Redeemer. We also live with profound brokenness, visible in selfishness, aggression, natural disasters, illness, and great pain. God invites us to bring our gratitude and pain into God’s presence.
God, thank you for your abundant gifts. Jesus, I am sad about so many things. Holy Spirit, walk with me in both.
You may enjoy:
My book, Two Hands: Grief and Gratitude in the Christian Life
My series of blog posts on grief and thankfulness which begins here
