Concentrate On What Is Left

Concentrate on What Is Left

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy! I look to you for protection. I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until the danger passes by. Psalm 57:1

Jamie’s mother had managed to prepare the traditional Thanksgiving dinner despite her grief over the death from cancer of her twenty-eight-year-old son, Nicholas. When Jamie and her family arrived, she and her husband seated their three young children at the table and glanced at the empty chair where Nicholas usually sat. As she fastened a bib around the neck of her two-year-old, Jamie remembered the stories her brother had told last year about his high school pranks. Although she had laughed at his description of the chemistry teacher’s reaction that sent Nicholas to the principal’s office, she had been concerned that Nicholas was giving her ten-year-old son ideas. She had started to scold him in her usual big-sister way, but Nicholas winked at her as he grinned and asked everyone to hold hands as he thanked the Lord for “The turkeys gathered for another year to eat turkey.”

As Jamie sighed at the memory of that last dinner before the cancer reappeared, her eight-year-old daughter turned to her grandmother. “My friend Sarah says her family always says three things they are thankful for before they eat Thanksgiving dinner. Let’s do that too.”

But Jamie’s mother snapped at the child, “I have nothing to be thankful for! Just hush and eat.”

Jamie patted her disappointed daughter on the shoulder and exchanged a sorrowful glance with her husband. Yes, she understood her mother was grieving for Nicholas; she was too. But didn’t her mother see she still had a loving daughter, a concerned son-in-law, and three healthy, beautiful grandchildren? Couldn’t she have been thankful for them?

Good question. Yes, what if we concentrated on what we still have instead of on what we have lost? —SANDRA

Lord, when I can’t thank you for the situation, help me to thank you for your presence, your peace, your abiding love. Help me not to question why but to accept your comforting arms.

One act of thanksgiving when things go wrong with us is worth a thousand thanks when things are agreeable to our inclination.

—SAINT JOHN OF AVILA (1500–1569), SPANISH PREACHER, AUTHOR, AND MYSTIC