An Attitude of Gratitude

"Next time, we should get a cooler movie and better snacks," said my 4 1/2 year old son.  He said this immediately following a family movie night where we watched, Zootopia (his pick) and had popcorn and ice cream for a treat. His father and I stood there with our mouthes gaping open, thinking, "What the heck!?" as we then proceeded to launch into a tag team lecture on gratitude which included references to starving children in Africa, children whose parents don't plan fun movies nights, and the trump card of "Jesus said we should be grateful!" The waterworks started and he immediately began to profusely apologize, but I had took a pause and thought, "Is this a true repentance  and understanding of what it means to be grateful or did we just lecture our child into apologizing?"  

An attitude of gratitude has been a recurring theme in our house as we entered the fourth year of our child's existence on this earth. At some point during the past six months as I was getting onto him for not being grateful for something, I realized "We have to TEACH him gratitude."  Duh! I don't know why I didn't think about gratefulness as being on the list of things we needed to teach him alongside of pointing him to Jesus, how to love reading, and all the other things we teach him.  It's probably because I don't remember someone sitting me down and saying "Let me teach you about gratefulness..." I just knew that "an attitude of gratitude" was something you were supposed to have. Around the same time, one of the "mom blogs"(as my husband so lovingly refers to them) I read recommended the book,Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World by Kristen Welch, which I immediately ordered because I thought "How providential that I read about this topic right when we are dealing with it"...plus, I'm a book nerd. :-) 

While reading the chapter, "Gratitude is a Choice," my pen was furiously underlining and taking notes as I began to understand why gratitude is a character trait which must be taught.  Gratitude isn't something that comes easy to a four year old....scratch that...Gratitude isn't something that comes easy to ANYONE. It is the opposite of the "I deserve" and "I have the right to" mentality that is, oh SO prevalent in our culture. Entitlement feeds our inner ego telling us we should get more, have more, be more. It's a poison which slowly seeps into our heart, steals the joy of contentment and the understanding of grace.  Grace is when we receive something we do NOT deserve...how can you understand grace when you think that you deserve everything you've ever been given? The only remedy for how this poison infects our hearts and minds is gratitude. Welch quotes from an article by Robert Emmons "What Gets in the Way of Gratitude?": 

In all its manifestations, a preoccupation with the self can cause us to forget our benefits and our benefactors or to feel we are owed things from other and therefore have not reason to feel thankful....Seeing with grateful eyes requires that we see the web of interconnection in which we alternate being givers and receivers.  The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed. 

None of us are born feeling grateful.  Gratitude is something we have to choose every day, every minute, every second.  I am SO guilty of expressing gratitude and then five minutes later turning around and complaining about something else.  As Welch says, "Maintaining gratitude is challenging because our situations, circumstances and emotions change like the weather.  But, God is always the same." 

God is not human that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

-Numbers 23: 19

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

-Hebrews 13:8

--Gabrielle Haston