Are You Grateful for Mixed Blessings?

On Thursday, many of us will be sitting down to dinner with family or friends and gratitude will be mentioned as we offer a blessing on the meal. It’s appropriate to the day of course; we were taught the Pilgrim’s story of thankfulness for surviving their first difficult year in the New World. 

At many of our tables there will be a nod to the formerly religious aspect of the day as someone suggests, “Let’s go around the table and everyone say what they’re grateful for.” 

It’s easy at times like this to name good health, career success, and our kid’s accomplishments, but we often forget that some of our best gifts don’t come in pretty wrapping.  I suggest that we put a new spin on this tradition. This year ask your guests: What are the mixed blessings in your life this year?

Here are some examples: There was the day you were running late and therefore missed the big accident or traffic jam; or the day you skipped church but when channel surfing heard a speaker that gave you a new outlook on life; Maybe it was the day you got lost in a new part of town but in your wandering found a store that sold exactly what you had been hunting for months. Get the idea?

Then try upping the ante a bit: How about when you got fired but at out-placement you found the work you really want to do? Or maybe the person you wanted to marry said “No”, and broke your heart, but months later you met the one you were supposed to make a life with. 

You get the idea, but let’s push it a bit farther. How about the serious illness that knocked you off your feet but having to stay in bed gave you time to recast your life? Or maybe the struggle to accept a more permanent disability made it plain who your friends really were or revealed a talent you didn’t know you had? 

Okay, even harder now: What about the death of a loved one that devastated you but one day in the midst of grief you felt something other than pain and realized you were feeling joy like nothing you had ever felt and you knew that you could feel it because the grief had cracked you open.

 Similarly, you may have gotten a gift from someone else’s death when you saw just how short life is and you decided to quit with the worry/status/fear and get on with your life.

These mixed blessings are not easy to accept or admit, and sometimes it is just faith itself that is the gift. It can be in the midst of terrible things that we’re forced to develop trust, and then we find, when the crisis is over, that our new beliefs are ours to keep.

Of course the graduate school level of this kind of gratitude is saying “Thank You” even before the good part comes. If you’ve had experience with mixed blessings you begin to know-- even while life is painful or unpleasant-- that there will be meaning in it. And so we say Thank You –purely on faith –even when we’re getting hit hard.

Yes, some of these blessings come in less than Hallmark moments. Maybe it was the painful feedback from a friend that clued you in on the truth about your personality flaws, or the DWI that was humiliating and expensive but it was also what made you look at your problem and change your life. Maybe it was an emotional breakdown that allowed you to put yourself back together in a new and stronger way.

As parents we coach our kids with, “What do you say?” when a gift is given. Can we learn to say that to ourselves when life hands us a package that isn’t very pretty?

So when that, “What are you grateful for?” comes around at your Thanksgiving table this year don’t groan, but dig deep. Name the blessings that came from pain and grief or loss and trouble.

When we can say Thanks for both the good and the bad, for the easy and hard times, then, just like the Pilgrims, we’ll have a real Thanksgiving.

***

More holiday essays in the collection: "Looking for Signs" published by Troy Bookmakers.

Practicing Gratitude

When asked for topics in a 12-step meeting the odds are good that someone will suggest gratitude as a discussion topic. Just by virtue of being in recovery we have plenty to be grateful for, and we know that having an attitude of gratitude makes everything we face so much easier. But how do we get that to stick?

The advice I have been told and that I tell others is to “practice gratitude.”

But did you ever stop to think about what that means. How –exactly—do we practice gratitude? I’ve been asking people how they actually practice gratitude, and I learned some great things.

First, and this seemed so obvious but gratitude is a habit. It’s a habit like exercising or smoking or not eating sugar or worrying.  Habits are repeated patterns of behavior or thought and they can be for good or ill. And we can learn or unlearn habits. I never thought of gratitude in quite that way. I just thought that gratitude was something that came over me occasionally, but wasn’t in my control.

Not the case.

So how do you get a gratitude habit? It’s like the man in New York City who asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer: “Practice. Practice. Practice”.

Psychologists tell us that new habits require 21 days to form or to “take”. So we can do some kind of gratitude practice for 21 days to make the mind learn gratitude. Twenty-one days is a kind of magic number for new habit formation.

When I teach new writers I use this “21 day rule” to help people become regular writers. They do a mini writing practice for 21 days, or write in their journals for 21 days. It’s the same with exercise or walking—commit to 21 days. One of my favorite stories comes from a fitness trainer who asks his clients to simply dress in their sneakers and exercise clothes every morning for 21 days. “Once they are dressed”, he says, “they mostly do some kind of exercise; we have created the habit of suiting up to exercise.”  I think that’s brilliant.

So to give yourself a lasting attitude of gratitude you have to create a ritual—a habit and actually do a practice —for at 21 days. Here are some things you could try:

·         A daily gratitude list—you know this one. But do it in writing so that the hand and eye are involved. This makes the brain imbed the new habit faster. Decide on a number: Three items each day? Or five? Or 10? And stick to that number—in writing.

·          Set the timer on your watch to the same time each day. An odd number is good like 12:34 pm or 10:10 am. When the alarm rings you stop and quickly name three things you are grateful for.

·         Expand that idea to your phone. Teach yourself to have one grateful thought on the first ring of your phone, later let that grow to the first ring of any phone you hear.

·         At home: when you are shaving or removing make-up—begin by naming out loud one specific gratitude from this day.

·         When you throw something in the trash tie that physical action to saying, “I am grateful for…” quietly to yourself.

·         What other simple habitual gestures can you link to naming a grateful thought? Taking out your keys? Starting the car? Taking your coffee mug from the cabinet?

 The more simple, repetitive actions you can attach to specific things you are grateful for the stronger your habit of grateful thinking will become. 

Luxury Problems

I’ve been stressed out recently. Well, more stressed let’s say. I’m in a constant state of semi-stress and most of it is my choice.

That’s another awareness and consequence of a long recovery: I know when something is outside of me and when it’s self-imposed. Much of my stress is the later kind and it exists because there is so much that I want in my life. That, however, is a related consequence: Recovery has given me dreams and desires and hopes and ambitions. There are so many things I want to learn, try, do and be. I forget—over and over—that I can’t have it all at the same time. (But even as I type this I think to myself, “But if I got really, really organized…)

Hence I am reminding myself each day this week that most of my problems are luxury problems. I just got back from a great mini-vacation and there is a lot to catch up on at work. I have dance class and meditation class, and I’ve been asked to give a talk for a local church and a workshop for a local school. It’s all stuff that I love. But I’m tense and stressed.

So in my car each morning I’m taking a minute to reframe all of this. Yes—I have a great big demanding job with a terrific organization, and I’m writing—which is my lifelong dream, and I’m asked to speak on recovery and caregiving—topics I’m passionate about. I also have great self-care habits—hence the dance and meditation. And meetings. And sponsorship. And…

So I say out loud in the car, “Yes, I’m stressed because I have a big job and work I love and a column to write and classes to take and papers to write and friends to see. When I start to think it’s hard to keep in touch with my friends and that this is a problem I have to remind myself: Luxury problem! I have friends! I also have an income so I can pay for my therapy and workshops and the girly things I love.

When I catch myself grumbling, “How can I do all of this?” I switch it around to say, “Look at all of this that I do!” I have to say it out loud though; I need to hear from myself how good my life is. If I listened to my head or my worrisome tummy I’d think these are real problems.

Thomas Merton after Christmas

The day after Christmas and all through the house—profound gratitude.  Christmas and Hanukah are over. Gifts are opened, exclaimed over, exchanged and worn. Thank you notes to be written. Some I’ll mail but the biggest thank you’s I have this year are for recovery, the 12 steps, all 12-step programs, my dear friends, great therapist, fabulous sponsor, self-help books (always my cognitive life raft) and God. Thank you for recovery, change, self-awareness and the sometimes fast, sometimes slow, willingness to change.

Here is a gift.

 This prayer was written by Thomas Merton as he struggled with many things—including God—in his life

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadows of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Hymn of Gratitude for Recovery

For more than 25 years, always alone in my car—blasting the radio, tape or CD-- I have sung a hymn of gratitude for my recovery. It goes like this:

Your love, is lifting me higher
Than I've ever been lifted before
So keep it up--
quench my desire,
And I'll be at your side, forever more.

You know it’s your love that keeps lifting me
So keep on lifting me Higher and Higher
Yes your love keeps lifting me
So keep on lifting me
Higher and higher.

Now once, I was downhearted
Disappointment was my closest friend
But then you came, and it soon departed
And he never
Showed his face again.

And your love keeps lifting me Higher
So keep on lifting me higher and higher

I'm so glad, I've finally found you
Now a one-in-a-million girl
And I whip my loving arms around you
And I can stand up, and face the world.


The original lyrics were by songwriters Jason and Miner. First performed by Jackie Wilson and later, a second platinum record, when performed by Rita Coolidge.

What is your recovery song?

Sylvia Plath Bake-Off

Today is the anniversary of the death of poet, Sylvia Plath. In London, February 11th 1963, Plath put her two small children to bed, then turned on the gas stove in her kitchen, stuck her head in the oven and died. She was 30. She was talented. She was celebrated. She was heartsick. She was depressed.

Celebrate Plath today by baking something yummy. Make cookies for someone who loves you. Bake lasagna for dinner. Read a poem. Write a poem. Cherish your life.

Gratitude A to Z

Here is another take on making a gratitude list. I got this from Mary Karr (new book, Lit, old book, The Liar’s Club—both books fabulous accounts of growing up in an alcoholic family and becoming an alcoholic and then—yea!—a recovering alcoholic).

Karr says that one of her early sponsor’s recommended making a gratitude list each day using each letter of the alphabet—A to Z.

For example:
I am grateful for AA meetings, Bus was on time, Cat was not lost, Donna my sponsor etc.
This is also one you can do with a friend out loud—or a good one to do in a boring meeting at work just listing your key words A to Z—and everyone will think you are making work-related notes.

Grateful for Mixed Blessings

On Thursday many of us will be sitting down to dinner with family or friends and gratitude will be mentioned as we offer a blessing on the meal. It’s appropriate to the day of course; we know the Pilgrim’s story of thankfulness for surviving their first difficult year in the New World.

At many of our tables there will be a nod to the formerly religious aspect of the day as someone suggests, “Let’s go around the table and everyone say what they’re grateful for.”

It’s easy at times like this to name good health, career success, and our kid’s accomplishments, but we often forget that some of our best gifts don’t come in pretty wrapping. I suggest that we put a new spin on this tradition. This year ask your guests: What are the mixed blessings in your life this year?

Here are some examples: There was the day you were running late and therefore missed the big accident or traffic jam; or the day you skipped church but when channel surfing heard a speaker that gave you a new outlook on life; Maybe it was the day you got lost in a new part of town but in your wandering found a store that sold exactly what you had been hunting for months. Get the idea?

Then try upping the ante a bit: How about when you got fired but at out-placement you found the work you really want to do? Or maybe the person you wanted to marry said “No”, and broke your heart, but months later you met the one you were supposed to make a life with.

You get the idea, but let’s push it a bit farther. How about the serious illness that knocked you off your feet but having to stay in bed gave you time to recast your life? Or maybe the struggle to accept a more permanent disability made it plain who your friends really were or revealed a talent you didn’t know you had?

Okay, even harder now: What about the death of a loved one that devastated you but one day in the midst of grief you felt something other than pain and realized you were feeling joy like nothing you had ever felt and you knew that you could feel it because the grief had cracked you open. Similarly, you may have gotten a gift from someone else’s death when you saw just how short life is and you decided to quit with the worry/status/fear and get on with your life.

These mixed blessings are not easy to accept or admit, and sometimes it is just faith itself that is the gift. It can be in the midst of terrible things that we’re forced to develop trust, and then we find, when the crisis is over, that our new beliefs are ours to keep. Of course the graduate school level of this kind of gratitude is saying “Thank You” even before the good part comes. If you’ve had experience with mixed blessings you begin to know-- even while life is painful or unpleasant-- that there will be meaning in it. And so we say Thank You –purely on faith –even when we’re getting hit hard.

Yes, some of these blessings come in less than Hallmark moments. Maybe it was the painful feedback from a friend that clued you in on the truth about your personality flaws, or the DWI that was humiliating and expensive but it was also what made you look at your problem and change your life. Maybe it was an emotional breakdown that allowed you to put yourself back together in a new and stronger way.

As parents we coach our kids with, “What do you say?” when a gift is given. Can we learn to say that to ourselves when life hands us a package that isn’t very pretty? So when that, “What are you grateful for?” comes around at your Thanksgiving table this year don’t groan, but dig deep. Name the blessings that came from pain and grief or loss and trouble. When we can say Thanks for both the good and the bad, for the easy and hard times, then, just like the Pilgrims, we’ll have a real Thanksgiving.

The Examen

There is a spiritual practice called The Examen that is a kind of daily inventory and gratitude list combined.

Each evening you take a few minutes of quiet time and sit with a journal and write down the answers to these questions:

What gave me energy today?
What drained my energy today?

OR

What was I grateful for today?
What was I not grateful for today?

The idea of The Examen is that over time a pattern will be revealed that shows you where your real talents and gifts lie.

This idea of following pleasure or energy to discern one’s passions and talents is also described in Marion Milner’s book, “A Life of One’s Own.” Each night Milner looked over her day and asked herself what gave really her pleasure. A key insight that she shares in her book is that so often she—and we--try to enjoy something because others enjoy it rather than finding out what we really enjoy.

It strikes me that for women in recovery this may be a new kind of inventory and also a way to find where God is working in our lives.

It also reminds me of the fear I had early in recovery of turning my will over to God. I thought that if I did that God would want me to be a missionary in Africa or do something equally uncomfortable and hard. People with more recovery than me pointed out that God would not want me to be a missionary because I’d be a terrible, fussy one. God had other plans for me that more likely included the skills and preferences he designed into this model. Hard to get that. Even harder to believe it. But a practice like the Examen can tease this truth out.

Academy Awards

I stayed up until midnight to see the final award go to Slumdog. I like to see the dresses and hair and now of course we also assess the work done on the faces. Bravo to those who have done just enough to look good for their age but whoa to Goldie; too far gone I fear. Botox yes but too much Restylene is not pretty.

Kate Winslet said that she had practiced her acceptance speech in the bathroom mirror when she was 8, holding a shampoo bottle as her Oscar. Tells you something about the power of visualization yes? But it raises this question: Who would you thank if you had the opportunity to take 45 seconds to say something to your peers?

Today in my thanks I’d have to include these:

Ebby Thatcher for getting Bill Wilson sober. Because of Ebby Bill could create AA so it would be there when I needed it. Ebby got the ball rolling and from that we got AA and OA and Alanon and ACOA, all of which saved my life.

I’d also have to thank the therapists who played more than supporting roles in getting and keeping me sane. Thank you Mary, Nancy, Susan and Johnel.

I’d have to thank sponsors and recovery friends. The posse that over 25 years that took phone calls at all hours, listened to tape after tape of answering machine messages, and showed up: Caroline, Brigid, Barbara, Sondra, Miriam, Meg, Stephanie. This includes the women I sponsored who also showed me what it’s like to be a woman on this journey.

And yes, like the stars at the Oscars, I have to thank God. Even when I’m not sure he sees or hears me some tiny part of me knows I have been carried and for that I am grateful.

Be Grateful that You are Not on Fire

It’s a standard practice in self-help groups to suggest that, when life feels hard, the best thing you can do is make a gratitude list. In some groups, where the ethic is more tough love than tender nurture, that suggestion goes like this: “You need to make a list of things you are grateful for and start it with, “I am not on fire”.

I always thought that was a particularly harsh way of saying that your problems aren’t so bad, but that was only until I met Glenn McDole and Frenchy Dupont. I met the two former Marines while I was writing a book about China Marines –those who served in China before World War II. For these two men, and the families of their colleagues, today is an important day.

On December 14, 1944, 150 American Marines and sailors were killed on the Island of Palawan in the Philippines. In the Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St Louis, Missouri a mass grave contains the remains of those men. The grave marker reads:

These U.S. prisoners of war of the Japanese were on the Island of Palawan, P.I. as slave laborers building an airfield for the Japanese military. Believing that an invasion by the U. S forces was imminent, the prisoners were forced into three tunnel shelters, thus following orders from the Japanese High Command to dispose of prisoners by any means available. Buckets of gasoline were thrown inside the shelters followed by flaming torches. Those not instantly killed by the explosions ran burning from the tunnels and were machine gunned and bayoneted to death.

Glenn and Frenchy were two of five men who escaped. Their story has been documented for military history, but their experience is also one of the most outstanding examples of human resilience.

The American prisoners on Palawan were part of a battalion that had surrendered to the Japanese at Corregidor. Arriving weak and injured they were stripped, starved and beaten. For almost three years on Palawan they received no medical attention and were forced to dig—by hand—an airstrip in the Philippine jungle. Naked and barefoot they worked for 14 hours each day. The men were allowed, at most, two meals per week from the garbage of the Japanese kitchens. Disease and starvation killed many, and most, like Frenchy, lost their sight as a result of beriberi and pellagra.

On December 14, as Americans planes approached, the prisoners experienced the immolation described on the grave marker. Glenn and Frenchy remembered the smell of roasting flesh mixed with gasoline and human excrement. But because they were at the end of the trench near an embankment seven men pushed out of the flaming tunnel, jumped over the cliff’s edge and rolled down a jagged rock slope. The Japanese shot at them as they fell. The men ran along the beach, bullets piercing their legs and backs, and then dove, bloody, into the sea and began to swim. Ten hours later, the exhausted, starved, blind, burned and shark bitten men crawled to shore on another island where they were rescued by Philippine guerillas.

Five years ago I stood in the National Cemetery in St Louis while Frenchy and Glenn told their story. I could not stop shaking my head. How did they survive? And, how did they live normal lives after surviving?

But they did. After returning to the states these men completed their military commitment and went on to have active civilian lives, careers and families.

Okay. What do you do with a story like that? On any given day my life is not perfect. I can easily grumble about the weather or writing or work. But today, on December 14, I can’t. On this day I remember the men who died on Palawan --and those few who survived. Tonight, at the top of my gratitude list I will happily write, “I am not on fire”.

Grateful for Mixed Blessings

Today many of us will be sitting down to dinner with family or friends and gratitude will be mentioned as we offer a blessing on the meal. It’s appropriate to the day of course; we know the Pilgrim’s story of thankfulness for surviving their first difficult year in the New World. At many of our tables there will be a nod to the formerly religious aspect of the day as someone suggests, “Let’s go around the table and everyone say what they’re grateful for.”

It’s easy at times like this to name good health, career success, and our kid’s accomplishments, but we often forget that some of our best gifts don’t come in pretty wrapping. I suggest that we put a new spin on this tradition. This year ask your guests: What are the mixed blessings in your life this year?

Here are some examples: There was the day you were running late and therefore missed the big accident or traffic jam; or the day you skipped church but when channel surfing heard a speaker that gave you a new outlook on life; Maybe it was the day you got lost in a new part of town but in your wandering found a store that sold exactly what you had been hunting for months. Get the idea?

Then try upping the ante a bit: How about when you got fired but at out-placement you found the work you really want to do? Or maybe the person you wanted to marry said “No”, and broke your heart, but months later you met the one you were supposed to make a life with. You get the idea, but let’s push it a bit farther. How about the serious illness that knocked you off your feet but having to stay in bed gave you time to recast your life? Or maybe the struggle to accept a more permanent disability made it plain who your friends really were or revealed a talent you didn’t know you had?

Okay, even harder now: What about the death of a loved one that devastated you but one day in the midst of grief you felt something other than pain and realized you were feeling joy like nothing you had ever felt and you knew that you could feel it because the grief had cracked you open. Similarly, you may have gotten a gift from someone else’s death when you saw just how short life is and you decided to quit with the worry/status/fear and get on with your life.

These mixed blessings are not easy to accept or admit, and sometimes it is just faith itself that is the gift. It can be in the midst of terrible things that we’re forced to develop trust, and then we find, when the crisis is over, that our new beliefs are ours to keep. Of course the graduate school level of this kind of gratitude is saying “Thank You” even before the good part comes. If you’ve had experience with mixed blessings you begin to know-- even while life is painful or unpleasant-- that there will be meaning in it. And so we say Thank You –purely on faith –even when we’re getting hit hard.

Yes, some of these blessings come in less than Hallmark moments. Maybe it was the painful feedback from a friend that clued you in on the truth about your personality flaws, or the DWI that was humiliating and expensive but it was also what made you look at your problem and change your life. Maybe it was an emotional breakdown that allowed you to put yourself back together in a new and stronger way.

As parents we coach our kids with, “What do you say?” when a gift is given. Can we learn to say that to ourselves when life hands us a package that isn’t very pretty?
So when that, “What are you grateful for?” comes around at your Thanksgiving table today don’t groan, but dig deep. Name the blessings that came from pain and grief or loss and trouble. When we can say Thanks for both the good and the bad, for the easy and hard times, then, just like the Pilgrims, we’ll have a real Thanksgiving.

Gratitude is a Behavior

Yesterday in a meeting the speaker said that acceptance is a process. That helps me remember that when I can’t really “get” acceptance I can still be in the process of acceptance. Similarly, I realized that gratitude is not just a state or an emotion; it’s also a behavior.

We make our selves notice things we are grateful for. We can make a gratitude list to further this noticing. We can say “Thanks” quietly or out loud and always we can recall that, “Service is gratitude in action.”