Gratitude in Grief and Transition

I am no stranger to transition.

As a child in a military family, I moved frequently throughout the US and internationally. As an adult, I have moved across the country multiple times and in and out of homes with roommates and family. Missional work has also taken me to many different places throughout my life. Transitions have always been, and likely always will be, a part of my story.

Through them, I have learned a few things that help my mind manage the logistics, my body adjust to new rhythms, and my heart process the weight of what is changing. Two of the most important have been making space for grief and practicing gratitude.

Now, as I prepare to leave the familiar behind and begin a new life in Guatemala, I find myself returning to these lessons over and over again. This transition holds both hope and loss together in tandem.

In my younger years, I did not give my heart much consideration. I assumed she could simply deal with whatever came her way, and that was that. But as I have grown older, I have learned to be a little kinder to my body, heart, mind, and soul. I have needed to find healthier ways of coping with the constant picking up, letting go, and beginning again.

That became especially important in 2020, the year everything seemed to unravel.

I experienced several transitions that year. I was living with roommates and had entered a relationship. Then the pandemic began. The relationship ended. Tensions at home reached an

all-time high. Stress at work, in my community, and throughout the world continued to build until my system simply could not take any more.

I had struggled with IBS for most of my adult life, but in July 2020, I began experiencing symptoms that would not go away. At first, I blamed the fresh, sweet strawberries I had eaten while picking them with friends the day before. I assumed I had picked up some kind of bug and that my body would eventually clear it.

But it never did.

My symptoms continued to worsen. By the time I was finally able to see a GI specialist and undergo a diagnostic colonoscopy, I had lost 15 pounds. I felt weak and lethargic, and I was scared to go out in public. The procedure confirmed what I was dreading but already suspected. They found ulcers in my colon. I had ulcerative colitis.

Ulcerative colitis is an autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease, and one of the main things that can exacerbate it is stress. Nearly every flare I have experienced since then has occurred during a season when stress exceeded my ability to manage it well.

I learned very quickly that caring for myself was no longer optional.

All those days I spent as a nurse in the operating room stressing about getting everything right, pleasing the doctors, and proving that I was doing a good job no longer seemed as important. I could not continue ignoring my emotions and stressing myself out without harming my own body.

Why do we allow ourselves to live in ways that hurt us because we are worried about what other people may think? The fear of disappointing others can hold tremendous power over us, but I learned it does not have to remain that way.

For me, lasting change has rarely come through sheer willpower or by muscling my way through something. Change happens when I encounter a love or concern greater than the fear controlling me.

Encountering the unconditional love of Jesus, and growing in my love for Him, has helped me surrender lesser loves and desires, including the approval of others. My concern for the health of my body forced me to confront my fear of disappointing people. The inevitability of hurting myself became more concerning than the possibility that someone might be unhappy with me.

Over time, I realized that although I could not control every source of stress, I had more freedom and agency in how I responded to it than I had understood.

Initially, I made those choices from a place of survival. Eventually, survival began to grow into care and stewardship.

And now, this is how I want to care for myself.

This is how I want to care for my body.

This is how I want to care for the people I love.

It took deep internal work for me to see myself as someone worth caring for. I believe that is often one of the greatest reasons we neglect ourselves. Everything else seems more important. Everyone else appears to matter more. Somewhere along the way, we lose sight of the intrinsic value we possess as people made in the image of God.

What a tragedy it is to abandon that truth. We are all worth the investment.

Because of this disease and what I have learned through it, I now have to be thoughtful about the way I move through transitions. I need time and space to process. I need to allow myself to rest and offer myself grace. None of this comes naturally to me. It is not easy, and oftentimes people do not understand.

One of the most important tools I have found for navigating these seasons is gratitude.

Scripture teaches us to give thanks in all circumstances. I believe God invites us into gratitude not only to recenter our perspective, but also to protect our hearts.

As I grieve what I am leaving behind, where I have been, what I have done, and the life still lingering along the trail behind me, gratitude helps me honor it. Gratitude gives what I have experienced a place to be seen, validated, and cherished.

The good, the painful, and even the ugly can be brought before a God who works all things together for good.

When I look ahead into the unknown and feel my body responding with fear, worry, and distress, I bring my friend gratitude with me there too. She carries the memory of every way God has already shown up in the first half of my life. She reminds me that I do not have to fear whether He will show up in the second half.

Gratitude and grief both require us to slow down. They give our minds, hearts, bodies, and spirits time to reorient themselves within a changing life.

These are practices that anchor us and help us move through transition with grace. They protect us from being completely battered by the storms of change.

They are gifts God has given us and tools He has placed in our hands. They are friends for the journey, if we allow them to be, and a safe place to remember that we are not alone.