What To Do When Gratitude Feels Impossible

At the end of his letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul gives these instructions: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:16-18 ESV).

To me, these are some of the most challenging words in the Bible. See, my husband and I battled infertility for twelve years, and when you’re crawling through the muck that’s in those trenches, rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks are some of the hardest actions to take. At least, they can be hard if you’re doing them from a true and honest place in your heart.

For a while during those years, I sold cosmetics as a side business. One of the first lessons they teach you in direct sales is that whenever anyone asks how you are, you say, “Great!” And you do so with a big smile on your face. Because you are empowered and happy and successful. It doesn’t matter if you just spent three hours doing makeovers and didn’t sell a single item; you still rejoice.

It’s the fake it ‘til you make it school of thought, and it’s one I think many Christians embrace. I know I did. It starts out as a reasonable idea. After all, you’re as tired of talking about how it feels like your soul has been ripped out of your body, crumpled up, and mashed through a food mill as all your friends are of hearing about it. They can’t fix you. You can’t fix you. So why not just put on a happy face and sweep the pain under the rug?

Here’s why: it is, at best, a temporary solution. You can only fake it for so long. After a while, when you haven’t made it, the mask you put on starts crumbling off your face. And in addition to the painful circumstances you’re in, you’ve brought additional hurt on yourself by stuffing your real feelings. Fake it ‘til you make it isn’t the face of gratitude.

I took German in high school. The Germans have words that English can’t really accurately translate. One of these has always stuck with me: wenigstens (pronounced VAIN-igg-shtens). It effectively means, “Well, at least…” The wenigstens approach was my second attempt at following the words of Paul. I couldn’t honestly rejoice. I couldn’t honestly give thanks. But I could come up with words that made it sound like I was. On the heels of yet another failed treatment, I could say, “Oh, well at least we don’t have to worry about saving up for college.” Or I could say, “Well, at least we have the freedom to just take off on a trip if we want since we’re not tied down with kids.” But just like my attempts to fake it ‘til I made it, this method of appearing to rejoice and be grateful failed because it wasn’t coming from my heart.

I struggled with this for a long time. How was I supposed to find true gratitude in the midst of the death of my dreams? How was I supposed to rejoice? The words of a song we sang in church when I was a child came to mind. It said we were to give thanks because of what the Lord has done for us, because God sent His Son, Jesus, to die for us. Period.

[Tweet “I had to stop and ask myself, could I rejoice and be thankful simply for the fact that I have Jesus?”] Regardless of anything else in my life, wasn’t Christ’s love for me enough?

My focus shifted. I started to realize Paul doesn’t ask us to be thankful for our circumstances. Just to be thankful in them. There’s a song that’s part of the Jewish Passover Seder that thanks God for his continued deliverance of Israel. In that song, they repeat the word dayenu. It means, “It would have been enough.” I come back to that now in my own life as I remember to rejoice and give thanks and to pray without ceasing from a heart full of true gratitude. Because as Christ came to earth to die for me, no matter what other circumstances I encounter, I can say dayenu.

Christ’s love is enough. And I am thankful.

Elizabeth Maddrey is an author of several contemporary Christian romance novels. She is also a wife, mother of two amazing boys, Awana Commander, and beloved daughter of the King. Though her PhD in Computer Science does little to help her succeed in any of those tasks, she owns her nerddom just the same. She blogs at elizabethmaddrey.com.

Photograph by, Unsplash.