What if I can’t think of anything to be thankful for?
As we kick off this week of praying for marriages and finding things to be thankful for as we go through 1 Corinthians 13, you might have thought this to yourself.
What if I can’t think of anything to be thankful for?
It might seem like *everyone else* has THAT kind of husband. That *everyone else* has an easy time praying for their marriage.
THEY don’t have *these* kinds of problems. THEY don’t have any idea what’s going on in your marriage.
What if I can’t think of anything to be thankful for?
Can I let you in on a secret? My husband is not perfect. My marriage is not perfect. I don’t have perfect kids. Or the perfect house. Or perfect cars. Or a perfect life.
Not even close.
I have a husband I love who sometimes drives me crazy or says something that hurts me. We work on our marriage and we still have challenging seasons. My kids are cute, cute, cute and LOUD, messy, and don’t like sleeping all night. And my house, cars, and life. Ha. Hot messes.
I know what it is to feel like you have nothing to be thankful for. When each moment is a battle of surviving over thriving. I know what it is to rack my brain to think of something, anything, that seems good, worth being thankful for in the midst of hard stuff.
What if I can’t think of anything to be thankful for?
Yesterday, a truck pulled into my yard to fill our propane tank for the winter. I didn’t hear them arrive, only when they left. My kids were outside with the sitter and promptly brought me in the fill slip.
They had overfilled our tank and had given us more gas than we had paid for or planned to pay for as winter approaches.
I knew it would mean a headache of phone calls and probably somebody coming back.
It was nothing to worry about or get worked about in the moment.
Later in the evening, we were enjoying dinner outside. Our son loves eating outside and the weather is perfect. But last night a funny smell started wafting towards us as we ate.
Gas.
We finished eating and looked and there was propane spraying out of the tank.
Of course, immediately it was easy to see how ANNOYING this was. And if that had been all that there was to see, it would have been easy to quickly crash and despair.
But I believe that what you look for is what you’ll see. So I could keep looking at and for the bad things or I could look for some good things.
The propane tank is outside. No smell in the house.
No danger in the house at all because it’s still shut off from last year.
We ate dinner outside and noticed it quickly.
The kids and I had somewhere to be so we didn’t have to keep curious kids out of it.
Our landlord was less than 10 minutes away, about to drive by, and came over to get everything shut off.
And today, the gas company was awesome to work with and set the problem straight.
What if I don’t have anything to be thankful for?
I’m not saying this was an overnight sensation. In the hardest and longest seasons of life, being thankful has not always been my go-to emotion. I like to wallow. Veg and numb out.
And I also know in those hardest seasons of life, when other people seemed to have their shiitake mushrooms together and I was barely making it, I thought that THEY could see things to be thankful for because their lives were just better than mine.
The reality is that everyone has their own mix of good and bad, easy and hard. The snapshot you see of anyone’s life has a lot more to it just outside the frame of the picture. No one wakes up with a perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect job, perfect life like a *poof* one day.
What if I can’t think of anything to be thankful for?
If you find yourself still asking this question, I don’t want to leave you hanging. I want to give you a hug, and pour you a warm cup of coffee, and listen to you. Since I can’t do that, here are 3 thoughts on what you can try as you look for something to be thankful for.
3 Thoughts on Being Thankful When I Can’t Think of Anything to be Thankful For
1. Start small, as small as you need to. Maybe you got to drink your coffee while it was still warm on the first try today. Maybe your lunch was extra good. Maybe your favorite pants were clean today. Maybe the parking spot closest to the door was open. These little things will help you get started.
2. Pray about the future. Something might not be true this minute, like a kid listening the first time to directions, or your husband using your love language to love on you. But you can pray for it to be true. And be thankful for it becoming true or truer in the future.
3. Enlist help. Sometimes someone else’s perspective can help you see what you’re not able. When my husband was in the hospital with two very little ones at home, I was all about the schedule. Sleeping, feeding, visiting, rinse, and repeat. But my husband was able to remind me of things I couldn’t see because I didn’t have time to breathe let alone look.
What if I can’t think of anything to be thankful for?
Maybe you’ve wondered about joining in the 10 Days of Praying for Your Marriage but you didn’t think you had anything to be thankful for in your marriage. I invite you to join us as we pray these 10 days of prayers. I can’t promise it will work any kind of magic in your marriage, but I can promise that God will hear you.
What is a way you find things to be thankful for when it looks like there might not be anything? Would you share it in the comments?
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