That Kind of Gratitude, Lord

Dear God,

Am I a grateful child? No, seriously. Don’t give me the polite answer. Don’t tell me I am grateful because I remembered to say “Thank You” after a breakthrough. Don’t comfort me too quickly.

Tell me the truth. Am I grateful for You, or am I mostly grateful for the things You give me? Because lately, Lord, I am beginning to suspect those are not the same thing.

A few months ago, I was working on a project. A difficult one. The kind of project that follows you into bed and wakes up before you do. The kind that turns coffee into a food group and sleep into a distant relative.

There were long nights, endless revisions, difficult negotiations, strategy meetings, re-strategy meetings, phone calls that should have been emails, and emails that somehow became meetings.

And I prayed, Dear Lord, I prayed. I asked for wisdom. I asked for favour. I asked for open doors. I asked You to touch hearts, move circumstances, and make impossible things behave themselves.

And while I prayed, I rehearsed the ending. I imagined the celebration. I imagined the tears. The dancing. The songs. The dramatic testimony. I had practically planned the praise session before the miracle arrived. I even made promises. “Lord, if You do this, I will praise You forever.”

Then one day… Boom. The project came through. The approval arrived. The opportunity landed. The very thing I had prayed, worked, worried, fasted and lost sleep over was suddenly sitting right in front of me.

And do you know what I felt? Tired. Just tired. No tears. No dancing. No dramatic worship session. Just exhaustion. And something else. “Accomplishment”.

I looked at the victory and thought…… “Well done.” Not “Thank You.”……. “Well done.”

What a dangerous little sentence. I tried to recover my sense of gratitude. I played worship songs. Three songs later, my throat seemed to submit a resignation letter. I tried to cry tears of joy; the tears declined the invitation. I tried to dance; my body reminded me that sleep deprivation is not an ideal condition for choreography.

Then came the truly uncomfortable part, I started remembering “Me”. The planning, the negotiations, the networking, the persistence, the strategy sessions, the execution, the sacrifices, the works.

And slowly, my testimony became a performance review. I stopped counting grace and started counting contribution. Suddenly, gratitude was competing with accomplishment and accomplishment was winning.

Lord, this heart of mine can be very disrespectful. Very. And that was when you called my attention to it. Not with thunder…. (you are much too kind even though I deserved it), Not with a revelation or with a sermon. Just a simple conversation with a stranger.

I met someone who had pursued a similar opportunity and he had failed. As we talked, he walked me through everything he had done. Everything. The preparations, the sacrifices, the discipline, the effort, the investment…… (he even invested in an uncertain project), the courage of it.

And quietly, I started comparing notes. Lord, this man had done more than I had. Much more. In fact, if success were handed out according to effort alone, he should have received an opportunity twice the size of mine.

Yet he did not. I did.

And suddenly my victory became very uncomfortable, because I could no longer explain it entirely with hard work. But what humbled me even more was his attitude. He wasn’t bitter and he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t asking where God had disappeared to. He wasn’t rehearsing his disappointment.

Guess what? He was grateful. Genuinely grateful. Thankful for the opportunity. Thankful for the lessons. Thankful for the journey and already preparing for the next attempt.

And as he spoke, I felt like a thief, not because I stole anything. But because, for the first time, I saw grace standing side by side with achievement, and achievement looked miserable.

Grace is strange. It is receiving what effort alone cannot explain. It is realizing that a thousand invisible things had to align for your success. The right person had to answer the phone. The right conversation had to happen. The right door had to open. Your health had to cooperate. The weather, the traffic had to conform. Your mind had to remain clear. Your strength had to hold. Your timing had to fit. Things you did not create, things you can not control, things you often forget, just aligned and they carried you through.

That was the day I began to understand something. Maybe gratitude does not begin when blessings arrive. Maybe gratitude should begin when we realize that we were never in control as we thought. Because the truth is, Lord, we humans are fascinating creatures.

When things work, we celebrate our competence, but when things fail, we question Your love.

When the promotion comes, we call ourselves brilliant, when it doesn’t come, we ask why You abandoned us.

When the business grows, we applaud our strategy, when the business struggles, we wonder where You are.

We seem remarkably skilled at giving ourselves credit for the success we have and assigning You the responsibility for the disappointment that hits.

Even in the corporate world, this happens every day. A company can achieve extraordinary growth, employ brilliant people, serve thousands of customers and create enormous value, yet one missed target can suddenly make everybody feel like the entire year was a disaster.

A leader can receive ten compliments and remember the one criticism. A professional can have an extraordinary career and spend years staring at the one promotion that never came.

Someone becomes a manager and immediately worries about becoming a director. The director wants a VP role. The VP wants a bigger portfolio. The finish line keeps moving. The appetite keeps growing. And gratitude keeps getting postponed. Again. And again. And again.

Until people spend their entire lives living inside answered prayers while feeling deprived. What a tragedy!

Dad, I am beginning to think that the greatest thief of gratitude is not failure, it is familiarity. Familiarity makes miracles look ordinary. We become so accustomed to God’s goodness that we stop being astonished by it. We start treating miracles like entitlements. And once blessings become expectations, gratitude quietly dies.

That’s when another uncomfortable thought struck me. Perhaps I have been walking around inside a miracle and calling it Monday…… (Dad, do you know how many times I have woken up on a Monday morning with a mourn?) Imagine!

Imagine all the miracles I live with everyday…… The miracle of breath I never negotiated for. The heartbeat I never instructed. The accidents I never knew You prevented. The wisdom that arrived when I needed it. The people who stayed my friends despite my shenanigans. The doors You closed that would have swallowed me if I had walked in. The ordinary mercies I consume every day without even noticing.

Chai.

That is the human condition, isn’t it? We are often better at noticing what is missing than appreciating what remains. We can have ninety-nine good things and spend the entire evening negotiating emotionally with God about the one thing that didn’t work.

Maybe that is why gratitude is deeper than happiness. Happiness responds to what happens. Gratitude responds to who God is.

Happiness says, “Thank You because I got it.” Gratitude says, “Thank You even when I don’t understand it.” Happiness dances when the door opens. Gratitude can still worship when the door remains closed. Happiness is grateful for the gift. Gratitude remembers the Giver. And that is the gratitude I want.

Not the loud gratitude of the moment. Not the emotional rush that comes when the email says, “Congratulations.” Not the praise that erupts when the cheque arrives. Not the celebration that follows the promotion. Not the relief that comes when the doctor says everything is fine. Not even the tears that fall when a long-awaited prayer finally receives its yes.

I want something deeper. I want gratitude that has roots. The kind that sits quietly in the soul and says: “Lord, whether You give me this or not, You are still good.”

I want to be grateful when I understand, and grateful when I don’t. Grateful when I win, and gracious when somebody else wins. Grateful when the answer is yes, and trusting when the answer is no. Grateful for the extraordinary and awake enough to notice the ordinary.

For now, I know, the deepest gratitude is not found in the moment when God gives us what we desperately wanted, it is found in the moment when we realise: He was already enough before He gave us anything.

So, my Lord, I have a question. How do You like my gratitude? Do You need my songs? My dance? My tears? My long prayers? My public declarations? Maybe You enjoy all of them. But I think I am beginning to understand what You really want.

You want my heart to remember. To remember that I am not self-made. To remember that my strength is a gift. That my opportunities are gifts. That my abilities are gifts. That my victories are not entirely mine. That even my capacity to work hard is itself a mercy.

So, Lord, teach me gratitude. Give me the deep kind, the soul-deep kind. The kind that makes me look at an ordinary morning and whisper, “Thank You.” The kind that makes me celebrate another person’s victory without secretly calculating why it wasn’t mine. The kind that allows me to lose something without believing I have lost You. The kind that makes me grateful not only for what You have done, but for what You are still doing.

And even for what I cannot yet see. Because when I think about it carefully, Lord… I have spent so much of my life asking You to bless me. Now I should spend a little more time asking You to help me recognise how blessed I already am.

And if I ever forget again, please remind me gently. Although knowing You, Lord, You will send me another someone to have a humbling conversation.

This is your daughter Lord, I am grateful, still learning, and checking in.