Gratitude

“In ordinary life, we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.”

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 “I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.”

–Ann Voskamp

She called us on the telephone that fateful afternoon. In between her sobs and sniffles she asked if we would be willing to lead their family in a time of remembrance and mourning over the loss of her infant daughter Lily.

She said Lily’s name out loud as if she had lived a much longer life than she had. A fuller life. A life filled with mother-daughter memories—memories most of us take for granted as parents. Memories of rocking her daughter to sleep at night. Memories of her daughter’s first words and steps across the living room. Memories of her daughter’s first swimming lessons and sleepovers on warm summer evenings. Memories of birthday parties and holiday gatherings. And many, many more. Sorrowfully though, she would never have those memories, because her daughter’s life came and went all too soon.

 Walking into the funeral home that inauspicious afternoon, we knew it wasn’t going to be an easy service to lead.

“There is nothing worse than the death of a child,”lamented Michael in a very melancholy tone. We felt humbled to be invited into such an emotional, sacred day and space.

Before the service begins, we watch as, one by one, Lily’s family members walk up to the bassinet at the front of the subdued room, and place their hands on her tiny body. They caress her with tears streaming down their faces. They try to find the comfort they need during this difficult hour. Her mother picks up a hand-knit pink blanket. She gently places the blanket across Lily as if preparing her baby for an afternoon nap. But she knows that her baby won’t be waking from her slumber here—that will happen only when she is in the arms of her Maker on the other side of eternity.

We begin the service with Scripture and an acknowledgment of their grief and loss. We continue with words of comfort and prayer, and an excerpt from God’s Heavenly Garden (author unknown):

“In the most beautiful of gardens, even those tended by the most skillful of botanists, there is an occasional rose that buds, but never opens. In all respects the rose is like all the others, but something keeps it from blooming. It fades away – or disappears – without having reached maturity.What happens in nature’s garden happens once in a while also in the garden of God’s human family. A baby is born, beautiful, precious, but fails to come to its rightful unfolding. This child, like the bud that never fully opens, is gathered back into God’s heavenly garden of souls – where all imperfections are made perfect; all injustices made right; all mysteries are explained; and all sorrows turned to happiness.”

We speak of her namesake, her mom’s favorite flower, the sweetly fragrant Lily, which symbolizes new life especially at springtime and Easter. We explain that the name Lily is especially meaningful to us. “I (Tom) have a seven-year-old daughter named Lilly, and I (Michael) have a 2 ½-year-old granddaughter with that name too. They too are beautiful and we love them very much, just as we know you love your Lily very much, even though she has been with you for a painfully brief period of time.”

We give words to the sorrow and grief that hangs in the air:

“We cannot even begin to tell you how sorry we are for your loss. We cannot begin to imagine how hard this is for all of you. We cannot begin to know how much you wish everything would be different today. We wish that it could be too.”

 “We also cannot pretend to know why this happened, why Lily’s life ended before it had really had begun. All that we can say is what we believe. We believe that there is a God who is here with you today. We believe that there is a God who loves Lily today and who loves you too. We believe that there is a God who is holding Lily in caring, comforting arms today, giving her a new life, one filled with perfect goodness, perfect love, perfect peace. We believe that this same God is offering those very things to you as well. We believe that God is here to hold you close in your distress and in your grief, that God is among you to lift you up and carry you through these most difficult days of your lives.”

“God has made us for each other. God has given us one another to support and care for one another, to be places of safety and warmth, of goodness and support. We pray that you will reach out to one another to help one another and to be helped through this by one another, not just today, but in every day to come.”

 We end with a prayer of gratitude for Lily and the ways she touched all who are present.

 At the conclusion of the service, Lily’s mother embraces us, thanking us for the support we offered to her and her family. We thanked her for inviting us into such a meaningful, though painful day, knowing that our words and prayers are insubstantial. We expressed our deepest sorrow and reminded her that we would be available, anytime, should she or her family need a listening ear to give voice to their grief.

We leave the funeral home and start driving to our next engagement. We take a few moments to debrief the events of the morning.

“I almost lost it during the service,” admits Tom.

“So did I.”

“When the mom went up to the bassinet and and covered her daughter with that blanket, I started crying. I didn’t know if I was going to make it through.”

“Yeah. That was really tough.”

This service, more than most, hit “close to home,”,and we both knew it.

A little later we arrived at Ronald McDonald House. Ronald McDonald House has a wonderful mission of providing a facility for families who need a place to stay when their children need medical care. We go to the center each month to interact and support some of the families who are making it their temporary home.

We walk toward the dining room. We notice a young mother sitting next to her daughter in the far corner of the room. We introduce ourselves. They invite us to join them at their table.

We sit down next to the child. She can’t be much older than seven or eight. Her hair is gone. Her appetite is gone too. It doesn’t take much prompting and the mom starts sharing about the challenge of caring for her “seven-year-old baby girl” and the frustration of “not being able to take her pain and discomfort away.”Her daughter has a rare form of leukemia.

 Our conversation goes on for nearly two hours as the young mom tells us about the number of treatments her daughter has received. She talks about how they celebrated Christmas in the hospital. Her daughter speaks up and tells us that she misses her friends from school and her toys at home.

The conversation breaks our hearts, and again, for the second time in one day, we are confronted with pain that hits “close to home.” Tom’s mind wanders for a moment to his own daughter, who is seven years old. He imagines being in the mom’s situation and being at a loss for what to do for his child. The mom speaks up and says that it’s time to go. She needs to take her daughter back to the medical center to receive another round of chemotherapy.

It’s also time for us to go home to be with our families. We leave, but before we say goodbye to one another, we voice out loud, as we often do at the end of the day, how thankful we are for days like this one and how “rich” we feel on the inside. We often tell people that days like this one are an absolute gift from God because they force us to be grateful for the life we have been given. By spending time with those who are hurting, those who are feeling lost or dying or lonely or sorrowful or confused or in pain in any way, we see the fleeting nature of life and as a result, we cherish what we have been given.

We don’t always get it right, certainly not. There are days when we feel just as beaten, battered and broken as the people we are meeting. On those days, we struggle to see the good in what we are facing and the beauty all around us. But what we are constantly learning is the more time we spend with other people who are feeling beaten, broken and battered, and the more we share about being beaten, broken, and battered ourselves, the more we are able to see goodness in the midst of it.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta once recounted a story that deeply impressed her:

One night, a man came to our house to tell me that a Hindu family, a family of eight children, had not eaten anything for days. They had nothing to eat. I took enough rice for a meal and went to their house. I could see the hungry faces, the children with their bulging eyes. The sight could not have been more dramatic! The mother took the rice from my hands, divided it in half and went out.

“When she came back a little later, I asked her: ‘Where did you go? What did you do?’ She answered, ‘They also are hungry.’ “They” were the people next door, a Muslim family with the same number of children to feed and who did not have any food either. That mother was aware of the situation.

She had the courage and the love to share her meager portion of rice with others. In spite of her circumstances, I think she felt very happy to share with her neighbors the little I had taken her. In order not to take away her happiness, I did not take her any more rice that night. I took her some more the following day.

 As this story shows, in the midst of tremendous physical poverty and pain, there can also be tremendous power in recognizing our human connection. The human spirit and need for connection is stronger than almost any physical need.

 We are all in this together, this common humanity we all share. We are all struggling with something, struggling in our own way with our own insecurities, fears and circumstances. For none of us have a perfect and easy life. Each of us has challenges and frustrations, as well as losses and disappointments. The first step toward leading a compassionate life is realizing that absolutely none of us are alone in this aspect of our human condition.

A very common misquotation of the Bible is that “God helps those who help themselves.” Nowhere in the scriptures does that phrase appear. But it is revealed to us throughout the Bible that God helps us to help one another, equipping and calling us to share what we have, what we know and who we are with one another in our need. When one of us suffers or is lonely, grieving or lost, a part of all of us suffers too. In our common suffering, God can work miraculous and mighty things through our connections and our compassion.

It is in recognizing that all good things in our lives come from a generous and loving God that we in turn can show our gratitude by being generous and kind to others.

Another common statement that so many of us make when we are talking about our own struggles is,

“At least I don’t have it as bad as …” “At least my troubles aren’t as complicated as …” “At least I’m not starving or homeless or living in a war zone or …”. “There’s always someone who has it worse.”

In a YouTube video entitled, “Brené Brown on Empathy”, the bestselling author, speaker, and professor and researcher at the University of Houston asserts, astutely, that nothing good comes after the words “At least …”.

We certainly agree.

Too many of us say those words, “At least …”, almost as a celebration that we don’t have it as bad as someone else. Of course, it’s wonderful that any given challenge or struggle is not as bad as it could be. But to compare one’s circumstances in a way that puts oneself in a position of superiority over others is not, in actuality, a very compassionate way to look at another’s situation. Compassion does not rate one’s circumstances above others’. Instead it simply enters into another’s situation and stands in it with others showing them that they are not – and need not – be alone.

We’re all family – God’s family. When one of us is hurting, we all are hurting. Compassion operates from that foundation. In sharing our days with so many people who are in pain in body, mind and spirit, every chance we get we squeeze our wives and kids extra tightly and make certain we tell them we love them. We know that life is incredibly short, unpredictable and fragile. We never want to regret that we didn’t appreciate them enough.

We believe that we all can either be jaded and bitter about the sorrows and terrors around us or we can be appreciative and grateful for what we have and with whom we are blessed to share this world. We can choose to see only what we’ve lost or don’t have or we can determine that we will recognize what we’ve found and do have. Intentionally choosing to be grateful truly does make a positive difference in our lives.

Gratitude cannot be forced. It can only come from within. It comes from a place of deep feeling for the common humanity we share. As we share more time with those who live in pain and with suffering, we are compelled to embrace the gifts we’ve been given and the fleeting nature of life, health and love. Gratitude comes, as well, in seeing the world through the lens of God’s infinite compassion and unconditional love – for one’s self and for one another.

Mother Teresa also said this,

“If we have no peace, it’s because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

Her words come from hard-earned knowledge, from experience “suffering with” those who truly have been the “least of these.” She spoke the truth. That truth can compel us all to live in a greater spirit of gratitude that we are not on this journey alone.

We’ve all heard the old adage:

“It’s better to give than to receive”.

What we have found is that the more we give of ourselves by entering into the lives and circumstances of others, the more we receive. There is much gratitude to be found in that.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash