Gratitude Journals. Gratitude Breaths. Thank You Notes. Those are the first 3 in an email list of gratitude practices, as it is Thanksgiving this week. I think we’ve probably heard all of them before, We’ve been told to make lists and to slow down and breathe many times. Maybe we haven’t had thank-you notes suggested (when was the last time we passed a hand-written note at all??), but it certainly does make sense to acknowledge kindness and beauty.

The 4th requires an explanation. Flip The Script means, in difficult situations, we ask,”what is one thing I can be thankful for in this situation?” It’s a simple re-frame that can exchange one “O” word – obstacle – for another – opportunity. And it reminds me of a different email I received yesterday, that stated “the opposite of misery isn’t happiness, it’s gratitude,” and asked us to “Be grateful for your struggles, because within them is the opportunity for growth and meaning.”

In the movie I watched last night, after saving the multiverse (don’t ask), one character asked if the time variance agency (really, don’t ask) could change another character’s regrettable, awful past for rescuing the world. He was told that past, that deeply painful past, is what created the hero that could save us all. There was nothing to change.

By the way, it was yet another instance of a story where the hero sacrifices him- or her-self so everyone else can live. Sounds familiar. I point this pattern out to my boys every time we see it, and explain that it’s in so many stories because it’s The Best Story. Our Creator, Savior, and redemption are wired into our souls. We all know it, and so does Hollywood. (I was going to add “whether they admit it or not,” but that’s silly. They admit it with every re-telling.)

Anyway. I’m just spending the time this week reflecting on gratitude, in general, as a concept, and in my own life, specifically. We could make lists or flip all the scripts, but each of them, any/all of them, are designed to open our eyes and turn our heads. Paul writes that we are to be thankful in everything, and that’s unbelievably difficult sometimes.

But so was my first deadlift. A deadlift works nearly all of the muscles in your body. It’s hard and I struggled to do very light weights. However, I wanted to do it, I wanted to be a man who deadlifts. And guess what happened? I kept watching YouTube videos on correct, safe form. I asked questions and studied others in the gym. I deadlifted often, even when I didn’t want to, didn’t feeeeeel like it. The light weights increased as it became an integral part of my workout routine. It’s still hard, but it’s awesome. I am a man who deadlifts.

I think gratitude is probably the same idea. Being a grateful person requires all of us, asking muscles we don’t always use to grow and strengthen. And we pay attention, hand writing notes (maybe we should bring handwriting back) or reading mass emails or whatever, and keep gratituding. Even when we really don’t feeeeeel like it.

We have been given our very lives, each breath, each moment. We’ve been given each other, the beauty of the changing leaves and the Church. We’ve been given touch, smiles, kisses, tapioca pudding, and breakfast sausage. We have been made to deadlift, we’ve just seen the wind & forgotten. Way deep down, in all of the most authentic parts of us, under all of the rock in which we hide, we are The Grateful. So, how about, starting with this week, we begin chipping away at the rock and reveal this stunning true nature of ours.