Thankfulness? You serious?

As I reflect on the past two years, I can’t help but acknowledge that it’s been a difficult time. I have lost acquaintances to COVID, struggled through a severe depression, dealt with a painful back injury and tacked some of the hardest days of work in my professional career. If I stopped there, what could I possibly be thankful for?

Well, this is where it gets interesting. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. I have a loving wife, a healthy son and a brand new baby boy that brings a smile to my face every time I see him. I released a new novel, received recognition for prior books I wrote, made great progress on recovery from my injury and even got promoted at work.

If I stopped at the difficulties in life, I would have completely glossed over all of that good. And that’s something that I think it’s important to recognize right now. All of us have things that we can be thankful for. It doesn’t denigrate the challenges we faced or the pain we’ve experienced. Quite the opposite, when we look back over the challenges in our life through the lens of time, we can see the good mixed in with the bad. Sometimes we have to look for it, really look for it, but it’s there.

I have much to be thankful for over the past two years but these years have also been the most challenging years of my personal and professional life and I’ve grown because of it. I’m a different person today than I was 2 years ago, and that’s okay.

Many of us get into this mindset of “once this is over, things can return to normal.” That isn’t the way to look at life right now. We have all experienced trauma, some of us recognize it, others don’t but we collective feel that something is different in ourselves. It’s a shared experience, one of the few we will all collectively have in this lifetime, and it’s something we shouldn’t gloss over.

Trauma changes who we are at a fundamental level. Those who have experienced trauma prior to the pandemic may understand this already, but for those of you for whom the pandemic was your first experience with trauma, it’s life changing. It brings out the worst in us, but it can also bring out the best if we allow ourselves to process it effectively.

Sadly, I don’t see that happening across our country, or the world. The pandemic has made us more divided, isolation a cancer that God acknowledged at the very beginning when he said “It is not good for man to be alone.”

I am fortunate that I have my family, that I have been able to lean on them and process this experience in a healthy way. Many of you may not have had that opportunity, it’s important that you take some time to reflect on that and find a way to process it, for your own health and wellbeing. Remember to be thankful, even if it’s simply for being alive. I know for some of you, it’s impossible to see that right now, but let time do its work. Don’t give up.