How can I be thankful when my world’s a wreck?
So many of us are struggling to catch our breath. A friend of mine with three kids lost her husband. Another lost a massive scholarship and college career when his university went under. Another friend lost the business she’d built for years.
1. Understand gratitude is your link to healing.
Around my son’s 13th birthday, we were told he might have lymphoma. Fear and grief overtook me. But a friend who’d buried his wife handed me a key: To be thankful is a lifeline in suffering.
I started small. Thank You that we’ve had him this long. Thank You for medical care. Thank You for the feel of his skin right now, in this hug.
2. Realize God grieves with you.
When your heart is blistered and someone rattles off, “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28)—it can be jarring. Though God creates good from every circumstance, He does not call “bad” good.
At the tomb of Lazarus—where Jesus knew He was about to conquer death—He still wept. In fact, the Greek term for Jesus being “deeply moved again” in John 11:38 also refers to “indignation,” “rage,” or “stern warning” elsewhere in the Bible.
Jesus was possibly not only grief-stricken, but angry at what was not God’s original plan. He did not call death and the utter brokenness of this place “good.”
How would your loss change if God were weeping and angry alongside you?
3. Identify—and preach to—toxic thinking.
Even more than horrible events, I find my own responses alienate me from God. I marinate in lies that I feed my brain. And those thoughts become me.
Sometimes we simply need to retell ourselves the truth, or have someone do it for us when we’re too weak. Think of Jesus in the desert, speaking truth to Satan’s cunning twists of Scripture.
Put your foot down on untrue, unbiblical, non-godward self-talk: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Do I believe truth frees me (John 8:32)—enough to pursue it relentlessly, to set fences on my thought life? To soak in what’s true and lovely, particularly about who God is (Philippians 4:8-9)?
Blessings on your week and worship.
Michelle Gerlach, Family Life
