Not So Thankful

Seven years ago this week, I made Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, and it was fun! It wasn’t stressful like it can be for so many—partly, because the total people coming, including me, was four. But also because that year excitement and gratitude seemed to be everywhere. It was in the air I breathed. It was bubbling up inside of me.

I was in love.

That year, I had started dating my now husband. After bumping into each other for over two years, we finally connected and discovered that like two pieces of a puzzle, we fit. We had a lot in common, including the fact that we were both from out of state. So, when Thanksgiving rolled around—rather than choosing what family we would go to visit—we decided to stay and make dinner together at my apartment.

Though my kitchen was small, making pies and roasting the turkey became a grand adventure. My sister and our friend brought over delicious sides, and everything turned out great—except my gravy. But the turkey wasn’t dry so no one seemed to mind. The day was a success, further multiplying the gratitude I felt.

Some years, at Thanksgiving, it is easy to be thankful. Your career is going well, or you’ve fallen in love, or you’ve come through something unimaginably hard. You gather with a few of your closest people around a table of food, and your heart is so full, it feels like it is about to burst. Life is good.

But then, there are other years. Years when you don’t want to go home to see your family. It seems as if you are in the same awful place as you were the year before. You can’t seem to move forward, and you know your family is going to ask how you are doing. What do you say? Or—some years, you can’t get home fast enough. A dark shadow has been cast—an illness, a loss—and you need to be with your people. Yet your heart feels so heavy, gratitude isn’t even on your radar.

As it says in Ecclesiastes 3, there is a time and a season for everything. But what do you do when there is a whole holiday centered around something you can’t feel? The “easy” answer is to try to find things in your life you can be thankful for, because no matter how low we are, there is always something. But I know from experience, that often, it isn’t that simple.

The year before my “in love” Thanksgiving, I didn’t want to go home. I was in one of the darkest months of one of my roughest years up until that point. I was in a lot of pain, I wasn’t ready to talk about it, and knowing, out of love, my family would try to get me to talk, I stayed away. Some friends took me in for dinner, and I spent the rest of the long weekend, reading in my apartment. I was so thankful for my friends at that time, yet the light of their love didn’t seem to put a dent in the darkness I was experiencing.

Gratitude often has a powerful way of pulling us out from under the clouds we find ourselves in, in life. But sometimes, we are too far in. During that dark time, I discovered that the only thing you can do, when you can’t seem to be thankful, is:

You pray.

Rather than telling God what you are thankful for, you tell Him what is breaking your heart. The God who brought the Pilgrims through their terrible first winter in Plymouth, the God they thanked for their survival, is the same God who wants to walk with you to yours. During that bleak Thanksgiving eight years ago, I cried out and asked God to meet me in the middle of all that was broken— and He did. He continues to be with me through every difficult day and bright season.

If you’re in a hard place right now, don’t feel pressured to pretend this week. Just because this Thursday is the day we, in the US, celebrate Thanksgiving, doesn’t mean you have to try and feel things you can’t feel right now. Just know that there is a place you can go with the ache you are experiencing. God is closer than you realize. As Paul says in Acts 17:27, He is not far from each of us. And He wants to meet you where no one else can; in the dark.