WHEN GRATITUDE'S HARD...

My baby photo--probably one year old....
My name means "God is gracious."

One discipline my parents tried to instill in me was gratitude, my childhood lessons happening around birthdays and Christmas. Before too many days ticked away, I was to sit down and write a thank-you note that “gifted” the “gifter” with appreciation for their effort and thoughtfulness. In the long-range view, this was more than an etiquette thing, especially when the gift we opened was, well, disappointing to a young child. Maybe the gift was socks instead of a new toy. Or an ugly sweater instead of that “cool outfit” everybody else was wearing. Such “thank-you” notes were basic training for bigger things—like trusting God for life's unwelcome turns.

Friends who shared my grief in my husband's recent death helped me see “thanks” in a new way with their sympathy gift of a book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy* by Mark Vroegop, a pastor and conference speaker from Indianapolis. My husband's packed memorial service, the kind words, the hugs, the baskets of cards, the meals—all brought comfort. But they didn't address the ache in my heart that asked, Why him? Why now? What next?

Long ago I'd memorized Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” Grief—times of silence and stillness--tested me to the core. It also sent me deeper into scriptures, with this book as a helpful guide.

Vroegop wrote from his own deep pain of holding his just-born but lifeless nine-pound daughter. His and his wife's heartbreak in this inexplicable loss eventually led him to understanding Biblical “lament,” a different emotion from what we understand as “sorrow.” Lament, he said, “is how you live between a hard life and God's promises. It is how we learn to sing and worship when suffering comes our way” (p. 84).

How many years had I read and studied psalms without realizing the “sad ones” had messages for my own sorrows? Vroegop described these “lament psalms” as ways to “turn to God in prayer, lay out our complaints, ask boldly, and choose to trust.” It's not gritting-one's-teeth and thinking somehow you'll get through this. It's banking on the Bible's promises and God's character to learn and grow through pain. It's forging through mourning platitudes to God-directed gratitude.

I'm still on this journey. It actually began decades ago when my parents died six months apart the year I was 31. Then still single, I was tasked with the emptying their home. I tried to be brave, do the “post-death” work. But I didn't grieve well. I'm trusting God to show me renewed hope and healing as I embrace scripture's “lament” passages in fresh ways. To be able to say thank you, even from a broken heart.

*Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019, 223 pages)