When Gratitude Feels Blocked

Today, we’re going to be talking about when gratitude feels. Blocked. And this episode is going to come out the day before Thanksgiving. So you might be busy. You might not hear this until afterwards, but I’m lying to make a short episode. For those of you that are having a hard time. Because I think what happens is around Thanksgiving, we get this flood of emails. That are poetic and lovely and talk about gratitude and giving thanks to the Lord and like counting our blessings and looking around you.

And when you’re having a hard time, That’s a difficult message to take it. Especially when you’re pelted with a hundred of them. Like you should just be so happy. You have it so good.

And. Even though I think.

That we should always get to gratitude is the punchline. I think it’s okay to have different feelings first. And a lot of times we actually need to process those other feelings to even reach for gratitude. So in addition to whatever you’re going through and it may not even be a big life hard thing, it might just be the every day. Busy-ness and chaos of life. You might not be feeling. Very. Grateful you might not even want to.

You may not be in the mood. It’s like pull out the list and think about how wonderful everything is and you’ll know because there’ll be kind of like a sassy teenager inside of you. Who’s like, no, I don’t want to do that. Don’t make me do that. I’m not ready to do that.

And really, I just want you to imagine. If there was an adult or a parent in your life who is like, oh, young lady, you will. You will sit down and you will write your grateful list right now.

It feels terrible.

So we have this rebellious feeling inside of us, but then we also have shame because we’re like, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I feel grateful right now. Why am I resisting this so much? We know. That it shouldn’t be like that.

Okay, but finger wagging your way. To feeling grateful is not.

I think the best strategy. So first, I just want to say, I love you. Wherever you’re at in your life right now. But good things. The hard things, the beautiful things, all of it. Like it’s just, oh, Kay. You are okay. You are lovable. You are good.

You are handling it. Right now.

She’s like take a deep breath and let your shoulders kind of drop and just be like, yeah. I am. Okay. I am handling it.

Whatever I’m feeling is valid right now.

We’re not going to talk you out of it. We’re not going to force you to smile.

There’s a long history of the world telling women to be quiet and put on a nice dress and smile.

We’re just not going to do that today.

I want to validate. That. For most moms, a disproportionate amount of the work of taking care of kids during a break. Or preparing for Thanksgiving falls on moms. It is a lot.

And so while a lot of moms are running their Olympic X. Of homemaking.

You’re going to get all these emails that are like, you should be grateful. And it just feels jarring. It can feel jarring.

And so if you’re one of these moms, that’s. Making three pies and cleaning everything and hosting people or traveling. Or you’re lonely. Kids are gone. Maybe you don’t have a lot of extended family. There’s a million reasons to feel feelings other than gratitude.

Before on Thanksgiving. And I want you to feel. Your feelings. I want you to process them out, sit with yourself. Like you would sit with a child and just say, tell me how you’re feeling. Just tell me everything.

Just listen to her. Yeah, that sounds like a lot. That sounds difficult. I see, I see you.

And if you want to, you can imagine doing that with the Lord. You can imagine sitting with Jesus or climbing into the lap of God, the father, which I always just pictured. It’s just like this giant white being, but I only see the bottom half of him, so like a climb in his lap, but I don’t even see the top half of him.

Cause he’s so big. And I feel so loved and I feel so safe and I’m like, oh, Father.

It’s hard. Having a hard time. And I just tell them all the things. And he is so happy to sit there and listen.

And when you really do that, when you really give yourself over to what you’re feeling, and we’re not spinning, we’re not chewing and ruminating, you’re not getting more upset or more sad. We just really say out loud or in your mind how you’re feeling and why.

And you bring the Lord in. You’re just going to come back to this place of peace.

This place of acceptance. This is what happens. This is what’s happening right now. This is where I’m at.

And that’s okay.

And I really love to tell the Lord, I will, I will do this.

If you were calling me to this, they will be done. I will do it.

And usually from that place. Then we can. Pick our head up and look around and go.

I do see. I see the goodness of God.

I see that he has. Limited the bad things. He has protected me, even in the hard things.

I see the love around me. I see the blessings.

But we do it from this place of really feeling grateful, not because someone told us to write a list and someone forced us into it and someone didn’t acknowledge. What was happening first?

And, you know, imagine that you. Had a daughter who just. Went off to college and had a really bad breakup. And she came home for Thanksgiving and you were like, oh, well, what are you grateful for?

You wouldn’t probably do that. You would just meet her, where she was at and you would hold her heart and you would sit with her and you would let her cry.

 

And you would invite her whenever she was ready. Hey, anytime you’re ready. You can write down something you’re grateful for and add it into the bowl.

A lot of families like. Right. What they’re grateful for on leaves are on bowls and they’re keeping track of it somewhere. And I would just, if it was my daughter, I would just give her space and say in any time you feel like you can do that.

And I want you to give yourself that kind of love. That kind of space.

Because when you get there on your own, when we don’t force you to be grateful, It will feel so good. It will feel so real. It will feel healing. It will feel right.

And all of this doesn’t have to take a long time. It might take you a whole 10, 15 minutes to cycle through all the things I said in this episode.

But we just want it to.

Be natural and not forced.

And just know that God has patience with you. And he will sit with you. He wants to hear everything you have to say. He can handle it.

And then you’re going to get to the place where you say, all right, Lord, I will do this. I will carry all these crosses. They will be done. And thank you. Thank you for these things. I see them.

All right. My friends, I made something special for you. I am going to be releasing. A daily advent reflection on the Catholic mom, daily podcast. Silly if you’re not already following that, wherever you’re listening to this. Just type in Catholic mom daily. I do a daily, like five minute podcast. And so I’m going to be doing a reflection for everyday, for lent, and it’s going to be mapped to the daily readings. And it is going to be about. Bringing light into darkness. About taking those places where we feel like wounded or hopeless. Or stuck. And bringing the light of Christ into them.

And I think that that is what’s so special about Advent’s kind of this dark time of the year. And then as we get closer to the Lord, he brings the light.

And then I made a journal that goes with it. So if you want to go to Catholic mom com. Slash. Advent 2023. You can download this free journal. You can either just download the PDF and look at it digitally, but also I’m going to link. Uh, store that we’ve uploaded it to where you can order a physical copy.

And you can follow along this program. We’re calling it. Prepare your heart. I’m going to help you prepare your heart.

For the coming of Christ.

And it’s completely free and it’s a beautiful program and you can do it with your friends.

I just wanted to give you something really special for advent, that draws you closer. To the Lord and to who God is calling you to be. Because he doesn’t want you to be stressed. He doesn’t want you to feel guilty or pressure. He wants you to walk closely with him. And have peace. And that is the work that we do here.

And. That will be the result of this program. This prepare your heart advent journal. And these daily reflections. So Catholic mom, calm.com/advent 2023. And you can go grab that. I’m praying for you, my friend. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.