A Year of Gratitude – April 4, 2024

I posed a question to myself today. I had hours of time to consider the answer. I walked nearly four miles today while using the snow thrower to clear away snow as it continued to fall. The question was both simple and complex. Now, I’ll ask you, “Can you be grateful for something that is unwelcome?”

I thought about this question as I walked behind the snowblower today. It’s a fairly mindless task, but it is slow and plodding. Today, I spent four solid hours behind the snowblower with nothing to do but think as the engine roared along and I listened to the plink of snow hitting the hood of my jacket.

It’s a simple question because we’ve all experienced unwanted situations, outcomes, and realities in our daily lives. We all know what it entails and how it can feel. It’s complex because this question can apply to small things like that dandelion that grows in the middle of a garden bed and attracts pollinators to the plants you have planted so carefully.

Yet it can also be applied to much larger moments. I’m willing to bet that a large percentage of us have had the ground pulled from beneath our feet at least once. It often happens rather unexpectedly. It takes us by surprise and can shake you to your core. It can leave you feeling as if you don’t know how to take the next step, how to face the next day, how to live life with this new reality you are faced with.

Today’s reason for considering this question was the snow. Instead of a life changing loss or transition, it was merely the weather. For weeks now, we’ve been enjoying a beautiful glimpse of spring. Our weather was warmer than usual. While we had plenty of dreary, rainy days, it looked and felt like spring outside. The grass was beginning to green up. The tulips were growing taller each day. Our rhubarb made an appearance in March which hasn’t happened in all the years we’ve lived here at the farmhouse.

I was starting to dream of planting the garden. It felt close enough to dream about. We were talking about garden projects, plants we’d like to add to our perennial beds, and things that we were hoping to do once our weather was consistently warm. Then our weather started to take a turn directly back to winter with an old-fashioned Nor’easter on the way.

Again, this was only the weather. Yet it was something decidedly unwelcome. I couldn’t prevent it, control it, or ignore it. Instead, I had to drag my snow gear out of the drawer, put on my boots, and head outside to clean up the mess Mother Nature had made of our driveway, porches, and paths to the chicken coop and duck house.

I had a choice to make. I could choose to be angry and unhappy about the weather in a way that would completely darken and cloud the rest of my day. Or, I could accept that the weather does what it wants to and choose to try and see that the snow was beautiful to look at even if I would rather be seeing those green tulip shoots and the rhubarb that makes me dream of pie making.

Being angry about the snow wasn’t going to make it disappear. Only shovels and snow blowers could help do that. The only thing being angry would do is take the rest of the day away from me, cede it to an unwelcome snowstorm on top of the time it had already taken out of my day.

It’s easier to be grumpy. It doesn’t take any effort at all.  Yet it was better to take a deep breath, start walking behind the snow thrower, and just keep going until it had been cleaned up again in the hopes that the snow would stop falling so that we wouldn’t have to clean it up a third or even fourth time.

As I write an entire post about something as trivial as snow replacing green grass, I know that there are unexpected and unwelcome moments that we cannot find gratitude for. There are losses so steep and wounds so deep that gratitude can’t find the sunshine it needs to survive in the same space.

Sadly, those unwelcome misfortunes can only be carried, sometimes forever. They are a burden and the weight of them is heavy. The wounds might scar over, but they never really heal. For those unwelcome events, I can only find gratitude in having people around me that I can count on to help me shoulder those burdens, to remind me that I can keep going. They make all the difference.

And to answer my own question, I’m not sure if you can find gratitude for all the somethings that are unwelcome. Perhaps some people have the capacity to be grateful for even the sharpest cuts because they provide room for growth. I’m not there yet, but I’ll keep on walking and see if I can get a little closer.

In the meantime, I’ll try to be kind to myself. I’ll try to accept the progress I have made, the decisions I make each day to look for gratitude even when I really need to dig deep to find it. I’ll love myself and cheer myself along as I walk this path of mindfulness. I hope that you’ll do the same.

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.