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Thanksgiving …When It’s Hard to Feel Thankful

Thanksgiving is almost here. The world is busy making travel arrangements, picking out turkeys and lining up family recipes like trophies, but you just wish the whole thing was over already. When someone you love has passed away, especially recently, gratitude can feel like a language you find difficult to speak.

You want to be thankful. You try to be thankful. But everywhere you turn you are reminded of a life that once felt fuller, warmer and so much easier. The holiday meant for giving thanks becomes a day you’re just trying to get through without falling apart. Your heart stumbles over that empty chair, that missing laugh and that recipe only they could make just right. Someone will try of course, but it just won’t be the same.
What does Thanksgiving look like when it’s hard to feel thankful? Perhaps it’s quieter, slower and a little humbler than you hoped. It’s taking a walk outside because the air feels lighter than the crowded living room. It is laughing at a memory that catches you by surprise. It’s letting yourself cry when grace feels too fragile to hold. It’s whispering a prayer that sounds more like a gasp. It is choosing, however shakily, to believe that God is still good, even when life feels anything but.

Grief on Thanksgiving is its own quiet contradiction. Almost accidentally, you may notice the small ways God holds you together when you feel like you’re falling apart. The strength to simply get out of bed, the friend who texts at just the right moment. A flicker of peace that feels like it comes from someplace far beyond yourself. These are not loud blessings. They arrive softly, like tiny pinpoints of light in an incredibly long and dark night.

Grief has a curious way of creating its own kind of gratitude, fragile and almost hidden. The ache you carry is its own evidence of love. You grieve because you were given something worth grieving.

If this Thanksgiving feels more like endurance than celebration, let that be enough. Grace is not measured by how brightly you smile or how beautifully you articulate what you are thankful for. Grace is measured by a God who walks with you, sits with you, weeps with you and promises that loss will not have the final word.

You don’t have to feel grateful for the pain or the ache that settles in when the house grows quiet. But you can, in small, steady moments, be grateful for what was. For who they were. For the way they shaped you, loved you, laughed with you and left you with stories that still warm your heart … sometimes even enough to smile.

Thanksgiving, even when it’s hard to feel thankful, is still Thanksgiving. It just asks a bit more of you. It asks you to sit with both the sorrow and the sweetness… and trust that, with time, the sweetness will grow again.