A healthy appetite isn’t the only thing we bring with us on Thanksgiving Day. We carry the burdens of our lives, whether it’s worry about your teenager distancing themselves from you; or grief over a loved one who passed away this year, the empty chair at the table weighing heavy; or maybe you dread going back to a job you can’t stand come Monday morning. Unity of Mount Pleasant Spiritual Leader Kimberly Renollet Heck When Kimberly Renollet Heck, Unity of Mount Pleasant Spiritual Leader, moved to a new house, still filled with boxes right before Thanksgiving, she knew the holiday would look a little different.
“So many times in our lives we get caught up in following rigid ways,” she says. “There's nothing wrong with rituals or traditions but in life sometimes we find that it doesn’t go the way we’re planning. How do we adapt and open ourselves up to a grateful heart, to see the blessing that is coming? How do you say to yourself, ‘I am grateful,’ even when life doesn’t go our way?” True gratitude isn’t about our circumstances.
Research supports the idea that acting grateful can actually make you feel grateful. Basically, “faking it until you make it” works. This holds true for happiness too - one study showed that people who consciously smiled more often actually ended up feeling happier.
Heck quoted Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk: “Gratefulness is the inner gesture of giving meaning to our life by receiving life as a gift.” .
