Why I’m Grateful for that Challenge

If you’re at all associated with Mormondom, you probably saw at least a few posts on your social media feeds with the hashtag #givethanks last week. This might have been nice or annoying, based on how many members of the Church you follow and how much you were checking your phone.

A brief, perhaps unnecessary background: On Friday, November 20, the Prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints (or the Church Formerly Known As the Mormons), President Russell M. Nelson, gave what was coined as a worldwide devotional. He challenged members of the Church to participate in a seven-day social media project, in which they would share one thing they were grateful for every day using #givethanks. He also included a challenge to give a prayer of gratitude each day. Basically, what it came down to was his desire for Church members to share their gratitude abundantly.

Any other year and this challenge may have seemed a bit blase. But this isn’t just any year. It’s 2020 (I’m sorry to bring it up again but it’s still true.) Fires, earthquakes, a pandemic that has killed over 1 million people, a fear-inducing presidential election, police brutality, racial tensions, and killer hornets have all featured heavily on our minds. People have looked for light and found loss. Suicides have surged. Record numbers of people report being lonely.

One story that struck me deeply this year was reporting done on the wildfires in Oregon. A man who lost his house was interviewed, and it turned out he had recently lost his 92-year-old father to the pandemic, as well. “This has been the worst year of my entire life,” he said. He was in his sixties. This is a man who lived through wars, who had seen financial depressions and political upheaval, and 2020 was the worst year of his life.

So, the challenge to express gratitude was, understandably, difficult to swallow at the end of this year.

Some in my circles accepted the prophet’s challenge without any hesitation and only saw good in what he was asking us to do. Others questioned it, seeing nuance in the act of performative gratitude, especially in a year like this one. I fell somewhere in between.

I have a friend who chose to leave the Church a few years back. She came over to help my husband and I string lights over our Christmas tree, and we ended up talking about the gratitude challenge. For the most part, she saw nuance.

She expressed frustration about the two different worlds she was living in. She works closely with the unsheltered population in our city as a part of her job and sees the daily results of lives filled with addiction, uncertainty, pain, and hunger.

“To come home from work and see a world on social media filled with my friends bragging about their huge houses or perfect children in the name of gratitude was hard,” she said. “Don’t they see the hypocrisy in saying that God just blesses some of us more than others? Don’t they see how wrong that is?”

I grew up believing in counting my blessings. I remember hearing a story of a man who had a long, lonely commute to and from work. He made a goal to use that time to express gratitude, and never for the same thing twice. For months, he drove back and forth, telling God how grateful he was for the earth, the stars, the air he breathed. This image of a solitary man driving home from work, looking at the moon and thanking God for it, has stuck with me for years. I wanted the goodness of that man. I wanted to be so thankful that I would run out of time in the process of naming things.

I still believe in counting your blessings, but I know the pain of seeing someone else casually count what I will never experience. It’s not envy or greed. It’s sadness, and it aches in the empty spaces inside of me. I don’t begrudge my friends for their perfect bodies or strong testimonies or flawless parental relationships. I work to rejoice with them. But it is work, and it isn’t always easy. I can’t imagine the pain of a couple denied children, a person without a partner, or a former worshiper who has lost their faith watching those around them count what is not, and perhaps cannot, be theirs.

As my friend spoke, I reflected on the defensiveness that sprang up inside of me. I saw and empathized with where she was coming from, and yet there was something in me that perceived another side of things. I found the words haltingly.

“You know,” I said, “I did the gratitude challenge. I really tried to be thoughtful of those that would see my posts. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. But for me, it was all about seeing everyone else’s insights.”

The last few months, no surprise here, have been hard for me. For everyone. For the world. We’re all navigating the waters of this ocean of hardships in different ways. The waves that have hit me have been harsh and unfamiliar. Terrified, we all swim on.

Between the pandemic, the election, my self-imposed re-education around the basic makeup of our society, and a lot of fighting about all of it, I had been suffering under the effects of anger for a few months leading up to this challenge. I was angry about everything. Each day, I found something else to be mad about. It was never-ending and corrosive to my spirit.

I didn’t know what to do with a lot of this anger, so I either bottled or burst out for weeks. I cried a lot, which was cathartic but not enough. The emotions that were fighting for dominance in me were disheartening. It felt like the world, as I knew and understood and loved it, took off a mask and revealed that it was uglier than I ever realized.

It was in this state of mind that I accepted the prophet’s challenge, grasping at the straws. If being grateful could fix anything, I needed it to fix me.

I follow a lot of members of the Church on social media, due to my social circles being a bit confined to where I’ve grown up. As the posts poured into my feed, with my friends expressing gratitude for this or that, my heart started to turn.

People that I had been inwardly angry with were now outwardly sharing their joys, and somehow, it brought me joy, too. Their lives weren’t all that different from mine. They loved their families. They were thankful to be employed. They saw light through the cracks of their lives, and it was enough for them. Seven days later, and I found myself walking around with a heart encased in the gooey protectiveness of peace.

As I explained this to my friend, I almost started to cry.

“I feel so much better,” I said. “It worked for me, at least.”

I agree with her. Our lives are all so different. To say that God has simply blessed an unsheltered person differently than He has blessed me is not enough. It’s not true. My life is drastically more privileged, safer, and easier, by no merit of my own. Life is unfair and fleeting. I wish I could change that, and I can’t.

But if I am ever going to do anything to contribute to the well-being of others around me, it’s not going to get done while I’m angry. There is a definite power in anger, but it’s a catalyst, not a solution. We need to be angry about social inequalities, about racism, about homelessness. That anger is necessary if anything is ever going to change. But God forbid we get stuck there. If we can’t move to a higher state of grace, then all we’ll ever do is destroy ourselves, and what good does that do for anybody?

This last week helped me see people differently. I was able to find peace, and that peace has propelled me towards more goodness than the anger ever did.

So, yes, I’m grateful for that gratitude challenge. It wasn’t enough to change the world, but it was enough to change a part of me.