I Thank You

“Love sees roses without thorns.” ~ German Proverb

‘Tis the month of February. The month devoted to flowers and hearts and candy and the one thing every human longs to have and to give ~ love.

I’ve written about love before.* I shared an experience I had walking the beach, reflecting on the significant handicap our fallen nature has when it comes to love. I drew an analogy of how “our human endeavors at loving seem to mimic the shells.” Rereading the words I penned just three years ago, one sentence in particular stood out. “Every day we take the “good” we have experienced and the “bad” we have experienced in our loving and venture out into the vast ocean of humanity, hoping to “get it right.” In many ways, I’m still floundering in that vast ocean of loving. But, I’ve also been graced with a fresh insight into navigating the more difficult tides of loving.

The change of heart began when a friend gifted me a gratitude journal. Thinking I was a fairly grateful person, I figured this would be an easy task. Every morning, I effortlessly jotted down three things I was grateful for (mostly tied around nature and coffee) and filled in the other prompts for the day. Almost every evening, however, the question at the end of the day left me stumped. “How could I have made today better?” A few weeks in, I realized the question left me lingering on the moments where I had chosen not to love or to love on my own terms ~ in essence, the moments where I hadn’t or couldn’t find anything to be grateful for.

It takes a tremendous act of love sometimes to be grateful when someone is challenging you, making you feel inferior, asking more of you than you were prepared to give in any moment, not meeting your expectations, etc. But, the graces are there for us to find the pearl of gratitude if we open our hearts to find the treasure. In situations where I was struggling to find anything to be grateful for, I would say to myself (quite reluctantly at first, if I am to be honest), “In this moment, I am grateful for __________.” Once I found I was beginning to develop the ability to find something to be grateful for, I started adding (most of the time just to myself), “I thank you, (name), for ______.” That “I thank you” became my way of saying “I love you” when loving seemed out of reach or impossible in the moment, which then enabled me to respond in a loving way even when I didn’t feel very loving. Gratitude gave me the eyes of love to see the rose without the thorns.

https://www.catholicsistas.com/when-you-say-you-love-me/

Contemplation:
Is there a particular situation where I am “floundering in the ocean of loving?”
If I reflect on the situation, can I discover a pearl of gratitude?
Can I redirect my “I love you” in that situation into “I thank you in this moment for _____________.”
If I am able to do so, in what way(s) can I respond more lovingly in the situation and what positive effects might that have with the other person?

This same process of contemplation can also be directed toward situations where we are floundering in loving ourselves. It just takes a willingness to open our hearts to see ourselves as the lovely roses we are!