Let Go and Grow Grateful

A few years ago, I was pretty unhappy about a decision made at work. So upset, it sent me on a furious job hunt. After several months of growing bitter as I waited for the right job, someone from another department approached me about an opportunity. It was an opportunity that I had dreamed about. Something I had been talking about and hoping would happen for years. And it was finally going to happen. In my organization. And they wanted me to be a part of it. And do you know what my initial response was? I’m actually ashamed to admit this now, as it seems ungrateful and arrogant. But I was annoyed.

I was annoyed that I had already made up my mind about leaving and had summoned the tenacity and thick-skinned motivation it takes to look for another job, filling out countless applications, and doing several interviews. I was so self-focused on how hurt I was that I had taken matters into my own hands and gone down a totally different path. One where I sought no counsel but instead tried to seek control of the situation. I assumed that when I had control, I would be happier with the outcome—so much so that even when an unexpected offer came my way, I was still so stuck in my stubborn decision that I couldn’t see it for the answered prayer that it was. So much for being patient or trusting that a different outcome could be had. But there it was, the opportunity I didn’t even have the faith to hope for was being offered to me. So much for gratitude.

So why is it that gratitude is so elusive? Maybe I’m just speaking for myself here, but in the scenario I described above, my own petulance and pride held me back from gratitude for much longer than I would care to admit. It’s in moments like these that the whining and grumbling of the Israelites from the pages of Exodus don’t sound so hyperbolic and unrelatable. Despite being rescued from slavery and oppression, despite witnessing jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring miracles, they complained—rather consistently, I might add—about the manna, the water, the leadership, you name it. They wanted options. They wanted better. They wanted different. They wanted control. Now, doesn’t that sound relatable?

On my last trip through the Israelites’ forty-year journey, I was struck by this passage in Deuteronomy:

And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. —Deuteronomy 6:10-12, ESV

Lest you forget, indeed. How quickly does our sense of autonomy make us forget all that God has done for us? All that He has provided for us? And what’s more, the control we grasp for not only warps our sense of gratitude but it also warps our sense of joy. Perhaps the antidote to our own wanderings, our sense of entitlement, pride, and control, is actually in the remembering. And in that remembering, there is gratitude.

So, gratitude, it turns out, is not a personality trait or a spiritual mood—it’s the practice of remembrance. A discipline of noticing the ways God has already been at work, even when the story hasn’t unfolded the way we expected.

Remembering can be as simple as naming what was given instead of what was withheld. Or writing down one provision at the end of the day. It could be pausing before our complaints to recall a rescue we’ve already experienced. These small acts of attention practically reorient our hearts from control to trust. When we release our grip on control, we make space to remember. And when we remember, gratitude follows.

^[1] Happy to report I eventually got over myself and accepted the position and found my gratitude at last!

^[2] See Exodus 2:23-14:31 for the full story—or I suppose a rewatch of Dreamwork’s Prince of Egypt would suffice as well.