Searching For A Grateful Heart

It’s been a very full two weeks.

We’ve had many visitors and many wonderful moments in my home.

There were three adult children including a pregnant daughter-in-law, three very young grandchildren, three dogs — two are ours and one was a visitor — and we were coordinating bedtimes and meals with three different time zones.

The grandchildren arrived first with their mom, squealing at the sight of their grandparents in the airport terminal. Next came the son and daughter-in-law; she was looking beautiful as she celebrated her pregnancy.

The early mornings were the best times as each grandchild emerged from their sweet sleep and shared a tender moment with their grandma, recalling the words from Proverbs 17: “Children’s children are a crown to the aged.”

All together, there were nine of us coming and going, and it was wonderful and challenging. Like most families, I suppose, nothing is smooth and we had our moments.

But it seemed the good moments were longer than the difficult ones, and after a while we started to settle into a routine that worked for each of us.

And then, in a blink of an eye, everyone was gone. My son left for North Carolina, my daughter headed back to Arizona, and suddenly it was very, very quiet in every room in our house.

I know I’m supposed to have a grateful heart, but it’s difficult when the treasures of your heart have gone away.

I remember a conversation that I had when I was in my 20s. I was talking with a neighbor who had recently lost her husband of 50-plus years. She told me that she wasn’t grateful for all their years together. She wanted more. She wanted more time with him.

It was such an honest response and so human.

I suppose our challenge is to create grateful hearts for our dearest relationships — even when those we love aren’t here with us because of proximity or death.

But how do we do that?

It’s easy to be grateful during those tender and funny moments when we are together, but how do we develop a spirit of thankfulness when we are apart? When we are missing them?

In his wonderful book, “The Holy Longing,” Father Ronald Rohlheiser writes that, “sanctity has to do with gratitude.

“To be a saint,” he believes, “is to be fueled by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less.”

A few paragraphs later, he writes, “Only one kind of person transforms the world spiritually, someone with a grateful heart.”

And just as you are digesting that dictate, he writes, “In the Gospels, the call to have a mellow, grateful heart is just as nonnegotiable as are the demands to keep the commandments and practice social justice.”

I certainly haven’t found the secret of having a spirit of gratitude, but I am convicted by Father Rohlheiser’s belief that we must strive to create one in our lives.