Of all the things I miss about my mama, near the top would be words I only heard from her lips. Words like, “Sometimes, you have to act better than you feel.”

At Thanksgiving, she would often require us to say something we were thankful for. It felt forced, like the times she told us, “Say you’re sorry,’” after we embarrassed a neighborhood child on the school bus or used the last of our older sister’s expensive shampoo in the shower. It was something we had to do, not something we had to feel.

Back then, it seemed a dry, pointless exercise to mutter thanks, or count our blessings. Now I realize she was purposefully planting a heart of gratitude in me.

And one day I would need it more than she (or I) could have ever realized.

Thankfulness VS. Gratitude

Seven years ago as Thanksgiving rolled into view, I was feeling less than thankful. I was suffocating under 14 pounds of retained fluid that I thought was just extra weight I had gained, even though I hadn’t eaten in a week. I was so exhausted I couldn’t put my socks on without sitting on the floor, and then it took several minutes. I thought, this must be what pneumonia feels like.

And with my college-age children coming in for the holiday, I wasn’t thankful to be in that state. I was disappointed that the few days I had to spend with them would be marred by this inconvenient and poorly timed illness. Whatever it was.

I scoffed at the words in seasonal commercials: thankfulness and gratitude. I felt neither of those and had no idea where to get them. Or if I even could.

It became even more difficult to be thankful when I found myself in cardiac ICU for two weeks. Despite having no family history and no risk factors, end-stage heart failure suddenly became part of my permanent medical record.

As my diagnosis began to sink in, my mama’s words surfaced again. My head did what my heart could not. The Spirit assisted as I prayed dull thanks even when I wasn’t feeling it. I was scared and so much uncertainty hung in that November air.

Rather than just go through the motions, I wanted to feel thankful, to live thankful. I knew something was missing. And turns out, it was something big.

Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast explains that gratitude has two qualities. First, an outward appreciation for goodness, gifts, blessings. Spoken thankfulness. (Thanks to Mom, I had this part covered.)

But he goes on to explain that to get beyond mere thankfulness to a deeper gratitude, we must add something. The second quality of gratitude is knowing that the blessing is freely given from a source apart from us, unearned and undeserved. Sounded like grace to me.

I began to understand the full formula: Thankfulness plus grace equals gratitude.

Because grace transforms feelings into action. Like grace going to the cross. Grace propels affection into love, and thanks into gratitude. Grace is the force that takes us from saying we’re thankful to living gratefully.

Grateful Living Requires Others

What I had been missing was a recognition of grace. And even though I couldn’t see it that dark Thanksgiving, grace was already there.

Grace walked into my home with homemade food for weeks after my diagnosis.

Grace filled my mailbox with cards for over a year.

Grace covered my counter with flowers for months.

Grace sat with my husband in the hospital.

Grace took my vitals with tears in her eyes and a promise of prayer.

Grace welcomed my daughter into her home as we traveled for medical care.

Grace held my hand and prayed when I could not.

Through the grace-filled hearts of others stepping in on my mama’s behalf, my fraying edges were gradually and carefully bound together when it would have been so easy to fall apart.

Grace. Undeserved favor. Unearned merit, meals, mercy. By experiencing it through others, I began to grasp grace from my God. And I began to understand the grace Mom wanted for me.

Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with heart failure—an incurable, progressive condition. From an outside perspective, that might seem like the end of gratitude. But for me, it was the culmination. I began to recognize that what our souls become in our best moments is a lifelong culmination of unmerited goodness from outside ourselves.

I began to appreciate the practice of thanks-saying my wise mama planted all those years ago. Preparing me, as mothers do, for a world she’d never live in.

My raw but determined thankfulness was then boosted by others who came bearing grace in many forms.

And because of that grace, thankful words eventually became full-grown, grateful living.

Meet Lori Ann Wood

Where to find her . . .

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• If you are on a detour, and find it difficult to communicate with God, get her FREE gift, 5 Prayers & Promises When You Can’t Talk to God.

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.

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If you would like to cultivate rhythms in addition to gratitude that will empower you live on mission in your neighborhood, check out Cultivating a Missional Life: A 30-Day Devotional to Gently Help You Open Your Heart, Home, and Life to Your Neighbors. This small book will help you make a big impact in your neighborhood as you learn to let missional living flow from the inside out. Get the 30-day missional living challenge free when you purchase the book.