Before anything else today, we pause to say thank you.
To every Veteran…
To every active service member…
To every family whose lives have been shaped by the service of their loved ones,
we are profoundly grateful.
Our appreciation is a day late,
but gratitude does not have an expiration date.
We honor your courage, your sacrifice, your steady presence.
We give thanks for you.
As we continue in our series of gratitude, we recognize that there are tangible things we can do to learn to be grateful in all things.
Learning to practice gratitude not as a feeling,
but as a way of seeing.
A posture.
A widening of the heart.
Again, gratitude is not about pretending life is tidy.
It’s about holding life honestly—
all of it—
and training our eyes to notice goodness right in the mess.
Monday we talked about the posture of open hands.
Today I’d like us to learn the practice of naming two truths. We talked about this in detail on Sunday. If you missed Sunday’s message, you can click above.
When struggling to find gratitude, try this . . . finish these sentences:
- “This is hard because ______.”
- “And I can still notice ______.”
Have you ever noticed how we are bent/conditioned to see the world in one of two ways?
good/bad
success/failure
holy/secular
joy/sorrow
Just the other day a friend called me out on doing this.
We were getting ready to start the Mooresville Pop-Up for Soul and I was really nervous. It was the biggest event we’ve ever done. A “legit” one with hundreds of other vendors.
Would we look dumb with our homemade candles and soap?
What if everyone else’s products were better?
What if no one buys our stuff and I’ve wasted Dawn and Layne’s time, volunteer’s time, not to mention the money . . . what if this whole thing is a mistake?
As I was talking to a friend I said, “If we don’t sell $1000, we need to rethink this. It’s a failure.”
Richard Rohr calls this dualistic thinking—the belief that things are either/or.
It’s a necessary starting point for children,
but not a place where mature faith stays.
Jesus invites us beyond dualism—
into a deeper, wiser place where two things can be true at once.
Where we don’t have to deny what hurts in order to recognize what is beautiful.
Gratitude lives here.
In the tension.
In the “both/and.”
Two truths held at the same time.
Not to minimize suffering,
but to see reality with a larger, more spacious heart.
Let’s practice…
“This is hard because I’m tired.”
“And I can still notice that soon the day will come to an end and I can rest again.”
“This is hard because I feel alone.”
“And I can still notice the text message from a friend.”
“This is hard because I don’t know what’s next and I’m afraid.”
“And I can still notice the orange streak of sunrise showing up like reassurance.”
Notice what happens in your body when you speak both truths.
It’s like the soul exhales.
We are no longer trapped in either/or.
We return to the larger truth:
Life is never only one thing.
There is always more happening.
More grace.
More presence.
More God.
Even Jesus, in Gethsemane, prayed inside this two-truth space:
“This is hard…”
and
“Love, I trust You.”
This is gratitude at its core—
not dismissing difficulty,
but insisting that beauty still exists beside it.
So today, try it.
Speak both truths to God, to yourself:
“This is hard because ______.”
“And I can still notice ______.”
This is your prayer.
Your grounding.
Your act of trust.
You don’t have to choose between honesty and hope.
They belong together.
And somewhere inside that honest noticing—
gratitude begins.
Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Andrea