just enough light

I took a few minutes Sunday morning to be still and to consider what I might focus on with my time and my writing this week. I asked myself, “What is Lent about for me?” An answer came quickly, gratitude and grief. The answer was so natural and spontaneous, it seemed it was simply waiting patiently for me to ask the question.

As I sat, my mind went in all kinds of directions with possibilities for gratitude and grief, and few of those directions were the predictable ones, such as being grateful for the things I appreciate and make my life easier, and grief for conspicuous losses. Instead, the two words expanded to include almost anything I could think of.

Gratitude became the question, “What experiences and people have assisted me in getting to this place in my life?” Clearly, that encompasses almost everyone and everything.

Grief became the question, “What have you had to leave behind in order to get to this place in your life?” Again, the door swung wide open to include people, ideas, certainties, capabilities, and all kinds of things that I no longer have access to. Some have been taken away, some I chose to walk away from.

The more I look at it, the more that gratitude and grief get mixed in together. Sometimes they are indistinguishable.

One quick story comes to mind. Many years ago Judy and I were having Thanksgiving dinner with my parents in St. Louis. At the end of dinner we engaged in an activity that had been common in the MacGray family, my mother’s family. We each took a piece of candy and said one thing we are grateful for. I surprised myself when I didn’t list any number of conspicuous sources of gratitude sitting right around the table. Instead, I said something like, “I’m grateful that I come from a family that valued education, that read books and used words, and that allowed me to be curious. That allowed me to have the career I have and to engage in writing, which I am beginning to do.”

Wrapped up in that statement of gratitude was a lot of loss as well. My being curious and pursuing a profession in psychology has led me far, far away from many comforting teachings and assumptions of my childhood and has created lots of mental and emotional conflict for me along the way. The grief and the gratitude are inseparable. That’s the direction I shall walk in the next few days.