Grateful for the Grind

He was walking home alone, purse in his pocket, minding his own business when the men stepped out of the shadows. There was no time to run and no one close enough to help. They took his money, every coin he had on him, and disappeared back into the dark, leaving him standing there shaken, emptied out, with a long walk still ahead of him.

The year was 1662 and Matthew Henry could have done a lot of things with that night. He could have raged. He could have spiraled into fear about walking that road again. He could have catapulted himself into despair. Instead, he went home and picked up his journal, and he chose gratitude first.

"Let me be thankful," he wrote, "first, because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, because although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed." Not sure my response would have been the same.

Four reasons for gratitude, found inside a bad night. Nothing about the robbery changed. Only the lens that he experienced it through did.

Some times gratitude is harder to find than usual. Business is hard right now, I'm grateful to be in business. Houses aren't moving and I'm grateful to have one to write this from. Gas prices sting every time I fill up and I'm grateful to have a car to put it in. People around me are stressed at work and I'm grateful to have a great team to work through things with. Family dynamics are strained in more homes than mine and I'm grateful to have a godly wife to walk through the strain with.

None of that is pretending the hard stuff isn't hard. It's refusing to let the hard stuff be the only thing I see.

James wrote to a scattered, struggling church and didn't tell them to fake their way to happy. He told them to look at it differently.

"...when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy." (James 1:2) 

Not deny it, not minimize it. Consider it, count it the way you'd count anything of value. And if you don't know how to find the joy in the counting, James says just ask. God isn't stingy with wisdom. He hands it out generously to anyone humble enough to admit they need it.

Notice James doesn't say the trial itself is the joy. He says the testing produces something. Endurance, maturity, completeness. That only happens if we let it. A trial wasted is just pain with nothing to show for it. A trial faced with gratitude and wisdom becomes the thing that actually makes us better. That's how we grow. Not around the hard stuff, but through it.

So why choose gratitude, especially when it isn't the natural reflex? A few reasons.

• First, it's the only good choice. Bitterness never made a bad situation better. Self-pity never opened a single door. Gratitude is the one response to hardship that doesn't cost you something on the back end.
• Second, a grateful spirit is attractive. People are drawn to someone who can find thankfulness in the middle of a mess. And with people come opportunities you can't manufacture on your own.
• Third, it's not just spiritual, it's physical. Gratitude has been shown to lower cortisol. The chemistry in your mind actually changes when you choose it. That's the difference between staying stuck in paralysis and moving into performance.
• And lastly, God says to. And He knows something about us and our circumstances that we don't. He knows more about our future than we know about our past. So be grateful you have a future, and ask Him for wisdom about what to do with it next.

What's one hard thing in your life right now that also has a hidden reason for gratitude inside it if you're willing to look for it? Where is this an opportunity to prepare for something bigger tomorrow?

Choose gratitude. Choose wisdom. Choose growth. No other choice will be productive.