Giving Thanks When Your Heart Is Hurting
A guest post by Tara Dickson
Every November the landscape changes just a bit. I’m not just talking about how the trees start to shed their glorious leaves but rather the fabric of our thoughts and conversations begin to alter. We begin to share the things we’re thankful for. We make plans involving an abundance of food, family and good times. It’s our way of anticipating the joy of the season heading our way.
But what about when your heart is hurting?
Are we supposed to drag our aching hearts into giving thanks? I’ve been on a journey the last several years of cultivating a heart of thanksgiving. Not just in November but all year long. Because I need it. Because giving thanks has changed me.
It’s been a process for sure and there are times that my heart forgets some of God’s goodness while walking through the shadows of life’s hardship. However, when I look back, it’s a gift I will never stop giving thanks for, this gift of perspective. Part discipline (of counting the ways I see God ) and part revelation from His Spirit.
The more I give thanks the more I want to.
When life gets hard and the way we envisioned it would always look ceases to even exist, we have two choices. We can become bitter, or we can press into the Father. We can hop back up onto His wheel and say, “Fashion me Father into a vessel for your glory.” Giving thanks is a choice we make, not one time but again and again. Ask God to show you the goodness He has stored up for you because of His great love my friend. He loves to show us the truth.
Ephesians 1:18-23 says,
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may,
know the hope to which he has called you,
the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
Lifting our eyes away from ourselves and our troubles exchanges our vision for His.
Seeing with his eyes helps us exchange our thoughts for His. If we pause long enough to gaze upon his beauty we come away changed. First, we pause, then reflect and we are renewed. I know it sounds easy, and it may not feel that way at all. But I want to offer you something our family received in great loss. A gift of perspective, a gift of letting go. This gift we’ve received that I’m giving to you is something we all know but it gets lost in schedules, lists and demands we place on ourselves and each other.
It’s the reminder that we cannot fully give until we have fully received.
That is why giving thanks comes when we realize what we have received. Without Christ I am a dry well but with him residing within my heart, I carry the wellspring of life. John 7:38 says,
”He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”
This year, may God fill your mouth with a song of Thanksgiving even in the midst of hard circumstances.
Tara can be found online here at taradickson.com and her words are beautifully spoken on her podcast, Seek and Savor . Make sure to check out her advent book here.
