Turn Your Darkness into Thankfulness

Gratitude isn’t just a warm sentiment that overcomes you when you’re standing in the light; it’s also a radical discipline that you practice when you’re standing in the dark.

Almost ten years ago, I was clinically depressed.

One night in the deepest part of the depression, I stood at the kitchen sink, staring at a stack of dirty dishes, in tears because I couldn’t muster the willpower to wash them. I’ve always been able to outwork any challenge in my life, yet somehow some crusty plates had become too heavy to lift. Through bleary eyes, I stared out the kitchen window into the night.

The dark out there mirrored the dark in me.

Way up the road, though, I could see a single streetlamp pushing back the darkness. It reminded me of what Martin Luther King, Jr., once said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.” I was fighting back against my depression by being depressed about it, and it wasn’t working.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Imagine if I told my kids to clear the lawn of leaves and an hour later I saw them up in a tree shaking more leaves onto the lawn. Then, when I confronted them, they told me they were trying to get rid of the leaves on the lawn by adding more leaves to it.

Absurd, right?

And yet, here in the real world, it would appear to be exceedingly difficult for us to remember that the escalation of something never solves it. More of something is always just more of something.

• You can’t defeat violence with violence, because all you’ve done is escalate the violence.

• You can’t defeat division by refusing to interact with divisive people, because that cements the division.

• “Love the sinner but hate the sin,” they say, except hate is a sin so—whoops—just more sin.

When you close your heart to darkness, it’s just darkness pushing back on darkness.

So, gradually, I opened my heart to my depression, and I began to catch glimmers of light within it. The light didn’t take the form of happiness, though. Depression eats happiness for lunch. Rather, what I could see in the dark—like a streetlamp way up the road—was small acts of kindness.

• The harried mother in the checkout line letting a frail, older woman ahead of her because the woman is carrying only a single sack of flour.

• A man with other things he could be doing, mowing the lawn of the newly widowed woman up the street.

• Strangers holding doors for strangers, without first comparing where they get their news.

• Someone coming alongside you and offering to do the dishes, so you can go find a place to cry.

• Every totally-ordinary, nearly-invisible, dignity-bestowing gesture which says in no uncertain terms, “You are worthy of being seen.”

When you open your heart in the dark, it’s not an endorsement of the darkness, it’s just a refusal to become more of it.

For instance, as American monk David Steindl-Rast says:

Not for everything that’s given to you can you really be grateful. You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence, or domestic violence, or sickness, things like that. There are many things for which you cannot be grateful. But in every moment, you can be grateful. For instance, the opportunity to learn something from a very difficult experience, how to grow by it, or even to protest, to stand up, and take a stand. That is a wonderful gift in a situation in which things are not the way they ought to be. So opportunity is really the key when people ask, can you be grateful for everything? No, not for everything, but in every moment.

Gratitude isn’t just a warm sentiment that overcomes you when you’re standing in the light; it’s also a radical discipline that you practice when you’re standing in the dark.

When you keep your heart open in the darkness, you keep your eyes open for the light.

This holiday, your dinner table may not look the way you want it to. Your relationships may not look the way you want them to. Your self-confidence may not look the way you want it to. Your bank account may not look the way you want it to. The world may not look the way you want it to.

Nevertheless, somewhere up the street, there’s a light pushing back the dark.

Keep the eyes of your heart open to whatever light you can see.

And turn your darkness into thankfulness.

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You cannot be grateful for every moment, but you can be grateful in any moment.

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• What is one little light—perhaps one little act of kindness—you’re grateful for this holiday? Feel free to share your reactions in the comments—I’ll be sure to reply!

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