What's Here Now?نموونە

So often, gratitude gets lost in our lives because we aren’t fully present. When we aren’t here, it’s easy to rehash the past and think about all the things we wish were different. Or to rehearse the future and focus on what we’re worried might happen. Receiving the present allows us to live in the here and now and accept it all as a gift. Viewing right where we are through the lens of gratitude helps us see a bigger and better picture. We can lift our heads and shift our focus to what’s really going on. To be grateful for the good things in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of life takes deep spiritual work. The good as well as the bad. The moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow. The successes as well as the failures. The rewards as well as the rejections. This requires us to practice the present moment because presence is what makes us well.

In Luke 17, Jesus had a moment where a group of ten lepers came to him to be healed. Jesus paused his journey and healed all of them. They were overjoyed as they went into town to show the priests as they reveled in their fresh lease on life. Only one of them returned to Jesus to say thank you. All of them were given a fresh start. Only one of them thought to say, “Thanks.” While all ten remained healed, it was the one who practiced gratitude who Jesus said was well: “Rise and go; your faith has made you well” (Luke 17:19).

What I am learning about the practice of gratitude is that you cannot be well without it. We become truly grateful people when we can say “thank you” to all that has brought us to the present moment. If we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. When we throw our circumstances into categories like “keep” or “get rid of,” we miss out on any potential redemption still waiting to come from the experiences we wish had never happened. To practice gratitude is to ground ourselves in the present and change the frame for how we view all of life.

Peaceful circumstances don’t create gratitude; gratitude creates peaceful circumstances. Gratitude helps us then experience the gift of belonging. To truly belong and live as beloved, we have to be willing to be vulnerable in the present moment. And authentic vulnerability only works if we are willing to connect with one another. Vulnerability doesn’t work in isolation. That just leads to more fear. But vulnerability coupled with connection leads to courage.

Isolation + Vulnerability = Fear

Connection + Vulnerability = Courage

Vulnerability’s strength deepens when we are willing to share it in connection with others. I had to be not only willing to connect to others but also be willing to connect to the parts of myself I had malnourished through self-rejection. I would never be able to belong if I couldn’t first belong to myself. Belonging to God was not the problem; I knew God loved me. It was belonging to myself that spun me out every time I went looking for approval, control, and security. I was looking for someone else to give me what I was not fully receiving from God and offering myself. Brené Brown says, “Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.”

May you choose to live in the present moment with God, yourself, and your people.

May you be here, be you, and fully belong.

Grace and peace to you as you live present and free.