A New Gratitude

He has sent me . . . to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

—Isaiah 61:1, 3

About a year after I left my job, I realized that I was thankful for the breaking of things that needed to be broken, that couldn’t have been broken any other way, thankful for the severing that allowed me to fall down to the center of my fear and look it in the face, thankful for being set free from something I didn’t even know I was enslaved to. There is a quality in my life that I sense now, like a rumbling bass line, or thunder faraway, and it is the feeling of having nothing to lose. I was embarrassed and ashamed in a deep way, and to my surprise, I’m still here. I’m happy in a new way, free in a new way.

I am all the clichés that made me so mad several months ago. I believe in the gift of pain. I believe that loss deepens us. I am grateful for God’s graciousness toward me that he would teach me these things. As much as I hate to admit it, I’ve found a new gratitude, and it’s gratitude for the way God has redeemed darkness and pain, for the way he brings something beautiful out of something horrible.