Before Oprah introduced the idea of a gratitude journal in 1996, I kept a journal. It was my prayer journal, containing a little bit of everything: things I was thankful for, prayer requests, concerns for my children and husband. Over the years, I’ve written in over 25 journals.

When I was in my 30’s and 40’s, I used to pray in an orderly manner, where giving thanks was one of the 4 tenets of prayer: Praise, Thanksgiving, Confession, and Supplication. What I was thankful for looked like a grocery list: my health, my husband, my children, my church, things I could see and touch. My gratitude was based on my circumstances and what I viewed as blessings. It wasn’t bad, but it appeared one-dimensional.  Like swimming on the surface, I could only view gratitude in what I was able to see in front of me.

As I’ve aged and gone through hard seasons, I’ve seen a different kind of gratitude emerge. I call it “gritty gratitude.”

What is gritty gratitude?

My experience with gratitude took a deep dive after my husband suddenly died in 2018. The morning after he died, I made a journal entry of the ways I saw God show up on the worst day of my life. I wrote the names of people who showed up at the hospital, texted, called, and came over to help me make phone calls. In the midst of my pain and tears, I sensed an uncommon comfort I couldn’t describe. There was a major shift in the way I experienced gratitude through the lens of grief and sorrow.

Over the past eight years, a different kind of gratitude has emerged from the rubble of my loss: below the surface, formed by the waves and rocks, and not easily acquired. Scars form the frame for what I’m grateful for now. Grief tells me what I no longer have. Gratitude shows me what I still have.  

My early years of making lists of what I was thankful for were not wasted. My brain was geared toward being grateful. It wasn’t automatic, but I had a familiar rhythm already set up to discover gratitude in the midst of a different season.

A few years ago, my daughter and I went to Maui. We set up a lesson to learn to snorkel. I had attempted to snorkel in the past, but I never got the hang of breathing through the mouthpiece.

We had a young woman who gave us instructions and examples of how to breathe underwater, and I was able to descend into the water.  Going below the surface, I was in awe of the brightly colored fish gently passing in front of me. Vivid colors exploded in motion as we moved through the water.  Our guide signalled to us to look around.  When I turned to see what was behind me, a turtle slowly passed by.  Being underwater was a ‘whole new world,” as the song from Aladdin says. What I saw underwater could not be seen unless I immersed myself below the surface.  

Grief has led me to discover a gratitude I never knew before. It’s no longer shallow and superficial. My gratitude is different, with a depth and broad expanse of something more. My “gritty gratitude” descends below the surface to discover not only the gifts I’ve been given, but the One who is the source of all I’ve been given. Much more than a list, my gratitude is a letter of the entirety of everything I have from the Lord, from whom all blessings flow. 

Meet Pam Luschei

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Begin Within is a series to inspire a year-round lifestyle of gratitude that will impact not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbors as well. Gratitude is a theme we talk about often around here because it ties so closely into other missional living rhythms. Practicing gratitude reminds to keep our hearts soft and expectant and our eyes open. Therefore, the more we embrace gratitude, the easier it becomes to truly see our neighbors and where we can join what God is already doing in our neighborhoods.

If you would like to contribute to Begin Within, you can find the submission guidelines here.