Welcome to Buoy, a Life in Deeper Water podcast. Episode 7. How Does Gratitude Prepare My Heart for More?
Hello human.
(click here to listen)
Gratitude is trending and has been for quite some time. It’s cool to be thankful. And according to the world, not necessarily sourced by God. More so, sourced by self, that being a thankful person can spring from one’s own power source.
And when the season of giving starts, it is with a silky gratitude ganache dripping down the social media vignettes we share. Beautiful Thanksgiving Day. Yummy life. More, please.
The spirit of thanksgiving is an enticing culinary pause to what we know is hours away. It takes just one day to be on the other side of grateful. What I call the hot breath of commercialism steaming up the manger scene. This season needs spiritual management.
I think gratitude has everything to do with how my Witness Resolution, how my resolve deepens for 2023. Actually, gratitude seems like the pier to jump from for any resolution.
Should we make a grateful heart the thing we most want for Christmas?
Maybe my swim starts with how to make one day—Thanksgiving Day—become a condition of my heart.
To be a thanksgiver.
The Most Thankful Person I Know
When I asked myself the question: Apart from Jesus, who is the most thankful person I know—dead or living—I ended up with a dead person. The Apostle Paul. And a living one. A young lady in Rome.
Just outside the Aurelian Walls of Rome, stands the second largest basilica, the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside-the-Walls (Basilica di San Paolo Fuori le Mura). Once the largest in the world, this basilica is among the city’s most important Christian sites. This church—with an awe-inspiring interior decorated with 80 columns and extensive mosaics—is historically presumed to be set over the tomb of St. Paul. Paul’s execution occurred about three miles outside the city, on the Ostian Way, an important road in ancient Rome. About two miles from the Basilica.
This was a place that made the short list, a must-see during our trip to Italy in 2015. We made the 45-minute journey, a mini modern-day pilgrimage, to go beyond the ancient wall that had surrounded Rome, to pay tribute to this humble, obedient apostle.
It was here that I heard what gratitude really sounds like. In another language. Visitors could leave a note and a donation in honor of Paul. I knelt at the altar next to a young lady and was immediately brought into the passion of her prayer, the power of the “grazie” in her gratitude, of what it sounds like when a person has relinquished all to the power of God, and what it felt like to be in such close proximity to it. I witnessed the voice of a believer’s thankful heart. She was so young to feel so deeply, so full of thanks for the life this apostle lived. She had fully embraced her destination. I wanted to have a conversation with her, I wanted to know her, and it was not the language barrier that stopped me. It was the intimacy of that altar moment. She had already shared her witness, without directing one word toward me. I witnessed what it sounds like, what it feels like to be deeply grateful. And for this, I thank you, young woman kneeling at the altar of Paul’s life.
The other person was Paul, the Apostle who makes forty-four references to thanksgiving in his various letters. Here’s one:
Philippians 1:3-6
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Even when they had been beaten with rods in prison, Paul and Silas were thankful. This is quoted often:
Acts 16:25
25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.
A gratitude jam at midnight. Thank you, Paul.
When I think about that young woman and the apostle Paul in Rome, I know I have quite a ways to go.
How to Be Grateful Beyond
Quite a ways to go to be grateful beyond. Beyond what it feels natural to do.
Beyond those I am comfortable loving: family, friends, and the obvious daily blessings in my life.
So, my question is: Who will it take to go beyond, who will God take me to? Who comes to mind that makes being thankful a spirit-filled personal growth challenge?
Let’s consider these relationships in our lives:
- Relationships that are sporadic, disconnected, that barely survive a short text exchange.
- Relationships that have been non-starters that barely survive a short text exchange.
- Relationships with people that you share less-than-more values with, but people you have learned from, worked with, people who have deepened your understanding of yourself and life.
- How about relationships with those people you do not match stride for stride on a daily basis, but you have a life connection that is undeniable and… durable.
We should seek to honor those relationships with gratitude for the connection we have shared with the intent to sustain that connection.
Gratitude can teach us to step beyond our natural affinity for people we easily understand, love, and align with. It can crack the window to understanding more about someone’s journey.
Gratitude Prepares the Heart for More
Gratitude prepares the heart for more. And our hearts need preparing. We are complex far beyond what we represent to others. Our culture can make quite the kitchen mess out of communicating with each other. The cultural guidelines that continue evolving to assure our sensitivity to how a person wants to be seen, approached, and treated does not guarantee that we really see each other.
And it doesn’t make it any easier that we are so adept at drawing conclusions about who someone is. Our culture collaborates with human nature relentlessly to make sure we know how to draw on assumptions immediately, with a never-ending supply.
But it is unavoidable that we are all finding our way through every human’s fair share of messy kitchens.
Being human illuminates our uniqueness beyond anything we claim to stand for. We don’t have to understand or align with everything about a person. We need to see the person. When we quit seeing others as one of a kind, we quit seeing. When we see others as an ideology, we quit hearing how their story is going because we think we know it. We do not.
Ideology has no real resting place in my daily life. My life is not a debate. I do not want to live with my fellow humans based on the premise that “because you think this, you are this kind of person.” I want a live connection. We share the journey together. Our circumstances vary—we choose to live how we each live and are accountable for it—but I am capable (thanks to my Creator) and equipped (thanks to my Savior) to connect to where you are as a human right now, beyond a cultural directive or political stance. I am looking for humans to love and support.
A Conversation is a Beautiful Place to Start
Because gratitude is an epic teacher. Every conversation has something to be thankful for. It is a beautiful place to start.
We can discover and deepen gratitude on paths other than our own.
Granted, a personal connection comes with risk, but the intrinsic reward will outlive the chance we take.
So, are we thanksgivers? Someone who seeks to sustain a grateful heart? If you claim to be, or want to be, give some consideration to who you will reach out to first. That is what I am doing this season. I am sure it will prepare me for my resolution in ways I couldn’t possibly predict. It’s a God thing.
For this swim, it is seeking gratitude through people you have not connected with in a while.
- People with whom you no longer have a regular connection.
- People you see every day but do not connect with personally.
- People who are strangers on your path.
If you don’t know your first step, here is a simple approach I have learned about reconnecting: Re-introduce yourself into their lives by sharing some recent milestone, inspiration, realization in your life. Something that made you think of them.
With those who are familiar to you through everyday encounters: Tell them your name. “Hi, I am Kathryn. I have waited too long to share that with you.” I have so many people that I see all the time and haven’t really made a personal connection with.
With those who are strangers: “How are you doing today?” (that will go somewhere…)
It’s doable. Relationships are redeemable.
That woman at Paul’s burial site in Rome, was filled and overflowing with gratitude for the life Paul lived to bring Jesus to so many others.
That amazing apostle, Paul (formerly known as Saul of Tarsus) was so thankful for his redemption that he was willing to travel on whatever road he needed to be on to get others to their Damascus. He gave his final earthly witness on a road two miles from the young girl whose gratitude took me beyond.
So You May Know God Better
We can take on the mindset of Apostle Paul. In writing his brothers and sisters in Ephesus:
16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. Ephesians 1:16-17
This might be the perfect prayer for how I will love. I am going to return to this every day through 2023.
During all this God-mentoring, I thought: “I am going to write a gratitude poem for my humans for episode 8, that’s you by the way.” But I am too wordy to be a poet, too many postscripts in my life. So, it is going to be a gratitude prayer, that I envision some will listen to while traveling to Thanksgiving dinner, or maybe you are in charge of the prayer this year, and this is good timing, or just sometime during the holiday weekend. Or when you get back because you couldn’t get to it. Or you remember it next March of 2023. It will be here for you in Episode 8.
Because gratitude prepares the heart for more. Seeking gratitude in our personal connections prepares our hearts for love. Because being a follower of Jesus is not an ideology. It is the intimate experience of being loved so we can love. Being grateful for how someone brings value to your life takes you to the beyond of loving them.
Paul said,
16 Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16
I can 100% assure you, that it is God’s Will that I stand by you, live life alongside you, and tell you: God is with you. When Fall’s brilliance begins to dull, it is our Creator’s nature cue, to prepare our hearts to be full-on thankful and rejoice for the greatest gift we will receive this season.
His grace. My gratitude.
See ya on the Buoy.
I encourage you to speak up human. If Buoy brings value to you take a moment to share it with someone. Write a quick review so we reach more seekers. Comment, ask questions.
You can find me at kathrynbise.com and @buoykathrynb on Instagram.
Buoy is a Life in Deeper Water podcast.