Love, loss and gratitude: Finding light in dark times

‘Tis the season — for gratitude. I love that November encourages/reminds us to be grateful, even when it’s hard. Gratitude is a healing balm for broken hearts, a salve for wounded souls and a way for us to look upward, even in our deepest distress. Gratitude and sorrow can and do coexist. Psychotherapist and author Francis Weller writes, “The work of a mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.” Indeed, I have done some stretching over the years.
Weller continues: “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.”
I’ve heard some suggest that we learn to be grateful for all of our hard stuff. I disagree. I think it’s wrong and so unkind to suggest that someone be thankful for abuse, trauma or a myriad of other really hard things. However, I am suggesting that even during those times, there will be glimmers of hope and ways to be grateful, even for small acts of kindness and compassion from others.
On Thanksgiving weekend 1988, I gave birth to our second child, a little girl we named Elizabeth. The morning after she was born, a doctor I did not know came into my hospital room and, without waiting for my husband to get there (or even asking about him) proceeded to tell me, without fanfare or compassion, “I am very concerned about your daughter.” He then listed off a dozen things that were “wrong” with her, announced that her life would be short, maybe as short as a month or two, and then left the room. I had just become the mother of a special needs child.
I felt deep grief over the loss of what would have, could have, should have been. She would never meet the milestones parents celebrate with their children — walking, talking, reading, learning to ride a bike, making friends, graduating, falling in love. She would never grow up to wear my wedding dress (a strange thing to grieve, I realize now), never have children of her own.
While I was working my way through the grief (and my guilt over feeling grief, a longer story for another day), I felt the knife thrust in a little deeper each time someone would tell me to be grateful I had such a special child, to count my blessings because “special children have special parents!” I did not want to be special! I wanted to be normal!
But here’s the deal: I was still able to find things to be grateful for. I was grateful for sunshine that warmed me. I was grateful for a husband who grieved with me and supported me as we adjusted to our new normal. I was grateful for our toddler who gave me hugs and kisses and who loved his baby sister intensely. I was grateful for a vehicle that could take us safely to and from the many appointments we had in the early days. This quote from Melody Beattie really resonated: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.”
Over time, my grief faded and my love for Elizabeth continued to grow. Long before she passed away at age 17, I was grateful for her, just as she was, and grateful for the many ways she blessed our family. Without Elizabeth to soften our hearts and teach us how to parent children with challenges, we never would have adopted. She changed the entire trajectory of our family. She never progressed physically beyond the capabilities of a 3-month-old, but she smiled and cooed at us regularly. Daddy’s loud sneezes always made her belly laugh. She was a gift to our family.
Some trials I never have been and never will be grateful for. However, I have learned I can still find ways to be grateful in the middle of despair, and later I am often grateful for lessons learned, for empathy deepened and a heart softened. I believe, as Terryl and Fiona Givens have said in their excellent book “The God Who Weeps,” that “God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into his purposes.”
We all have hard things in our lives, things that break us open and leave us wondering if we’ll be able to put ourselves back together. Gratitude blunts the edges of grief and helps us through that process. Grief is hard, but I wouldn’t trade the love behind the grieving for anything. This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for Elizabeth and the other children in our family who have taught us to hold grief and gratitude, and love and loss, at the same time.
This Thanksgiving, I invite you to reflect on your life and identify small acts of kindness, unexpected moments of joy or lessons learned that have shaped and softened your heart. Share your stories of gratitude with loved ones, or write them down to revisit during times of need. By acknowledging and embracing these moments, we weave a tapestry of resilience and love that carries us forward through the dark times and into the light.