I Am Tired Of Being Grateful

You have thanked God for a lot of small things this year.

For the week that just about closed. For the thing that came in on the Friday. For the person who did not ask about the money.

And you meant every one of them at the time. That is what makes the current situation so confusing.

Because now, when you go to do it, something in you does not want to, and what it feels like is not rebellion. It is tiredness. The specific tiredness of somebody who has been doing a thing for a long time without the situation changing.

You are allowed to say that you are tired of this, and a woman worn out by her own thanksgiving has never once been a woman with no faith.

And I want to say plainly what this article is not going to do, because you have probably heard the other version.

It is not going to tell you to be more grateful. That is the exact medicine that caused the problem.

It is not going to tell you that you are in the wrong for feeling it. You are not.

What I want to do is show you where in scripture this feeling already lives, because I think you have been carrying it as though it disqualified you.

How long wilt thou forget me

There is a psalm that opens with a complaint and does not apologize for it anywhere.

How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? (Psalm 13:1, King James Version)

How long. Four times in two verses, in the original, he says how long.

That is not a man being careful with God. That is a man who has run out of the patience to be careful, saying the actual thing, in a psalm that was kept and sung.

You are looking at a prayer that opens with an accusation and was kept in the book anyway, and an exhausted complaint has never once been the thing that got somebody thrown out of the psalter. Psalm 13:1 says how long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever, and the Holy Spirit is the one who preserved that sentence rather than a more reverent one.

And look at what the psalm does at the end, six verses later. It sings. It says I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me.

The gratitude at the end is not instead of the complaint at the start. Both are in the same short psalm and neither cancels the other.

You have room for both in the same week, and a genuine thanksgiving has never once required a person to delete the tiredness first. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds both ends of that psalm together, and it is written in Psalm 13 with six verses between them and no apology in the middle.

What actually wore out

Let me try to name what has happened, because I think the word gratitude is covering two different things and only one of them is worn out.

The first thing is the real one: noticing something and being glad about it. That has not worn out. The noticing still happens. There was real gladness on the Friday.

The second thing is the job: the obligation to produce a thanksgiving, on time, about a situation that has not improved, as a kind of maintenance of your own spiritual standing.

That one has worn out, and it should have, because it was never the same object as the first one.

You are worn out by an obligation and not by gladness, and a duty to perform thankfulness has never once been what scripture meant by giving thanks. The written word lets a man open a psalm with a complaint and close it with a song, and the Spirit of God is the one who can tell those two things apart in a person.

And there is something underneath it that I suspect is the real fuel, and I say it carefully.

Somewhere in there is a fear that if you stop being grateful, the small things will stop coming. That the thanksgiving is holding something in place.

That is not faith. That is arithmetic, and it is exhausting, and it is not how any of this works.

You are not holding anything up by being thankful, and God's kindness has never once been dependent on a woman keeping the payments current. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes that weight off, and Psalm 13 has a man complain loudly for four verses without a single thing being withdrawn from him.

Say it honestly, both halves

So the assignment, and I want to change one word of how you do it.

Name out loud what came in this week, however small, and thank God for it by name.

And before you do, say the other thing out loud too. The true one. I am tired of this and I do not know how long it goes on.

Say that first, out loud, to God, in the actual words you would use.

You are able to say the tired sentence out loud before the list, and an honest complaint has never once made the thanksgiving after it less real. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a sentence like that, and the written word opens a psalm with exactly that complaint and keeps it.

And then the list, and here is the change. Do not perform it.

Say the pieces plainly, the way you would tell a friend what happened this week. Not in a voice. Not with an effort behind it.

You are able to say a list in your ordinary voice, and thanks given without a performance in it has never once counted for less than thanks given with one. The Holy Spirit is the one who hears an ordinary voice perfectly well, and it is written in Psalm 13 that the man who complained for four verses ended up singing without anybody making him.